Ricochet
by l'amour-the-poet
Summary: Caught in a violent mob, Chloe must save her own life at great cost. Separated from Clark in an outpost hospital, she meets Davis Bloome and finds respite with the one person who was created to destroy Earth and her best friend. Vessel/Zod Chlavis Clex
1. part one

**Full Summary: **Clark Kent goes against Zod, only to find Earth more helpless than ever when Braniac's final plan goes into motion. The blacked out Earth lies vulnerable to an unknown threat, and its only chance for survival may lie in the tenuous bond between former friends.

Caught in the violent mob, Chloe Sullivan must save her own life at the cost of an old flame. Separated from Clark, caught in an outpost hospital and still dealing with the fallout of her actions, she meets Davis Bloome and finds respite with the one person who was created to destroy Earth and her best friend.  
(Vessel/Zod AU)

* * *

Chloe had expected her first meeting with Clark after the kiss-at-the end-of the world to go differently. She didn't know what she'd counted on: rushing forward and hugging him in relief, his confusion as she let go, Jimmy looking on cheerily as the awkwardness of the moment sunk in. Something that meant 'see look I'm worth something. Someone wants me.'  
Clark would have quizzed Jimmy and shaken his hand a little harder than he should've, or gotten that little jealous look in his face that he always reserved for Lana and…well, frankly, everyone.

But nothing happened like that, not easy, not for her. She sat outside a browned out hospital room with the sounds of chaos around her. Jimmy in that hospital bed. No computer, no calculations, no possible way she could be of help.  
Under the sickness in her stomach, Chloe thought that at least there was still Clark.

From the first moment Clark stumbled in through those doors, face grimy, looking lost -a familiar, well-worn piece of Chloe's heart squeezed away inside her. Nothing came out of her throat.

Clark's 'super' vision took on the details where she sat hunched but missed her still bloody hands against the redness of the canvas seat

You see on Dark Thursday, Chloe Sullivan killed James Olsen. It was a split second decision. There was one shot. One perfectly aimed shot.

* * *

It started with the mob.  
"Ron, get us out of here!" Lionel commanded, just like he did everything else. Someone had to tell him things weren't so easily done in the apocalypse, Chloe thought. The next moment she couldn't even see his face.

Broken glass scraped the cloth off Chloe's elbows. They were hauling her bodily out the window.

"Mr. Luthor. No!" She didn't hear him respond, or maybe she couldn't hear. Lionel wasn't going to save her, Jor El's vessel or not. Had she really expected his saint-mentor-to-Clark act to last when his life was at risk? Maybe Lex had bthe right idea under those lies of his.

She had to struggle against the hands, so many hands. We're coming to get you. The sounds of the crowd or her own yells didn't quite drown out his voice. That's when they flipped the car over.

Chloe couldn't see the rest, pinned in the crush of suffocating bodies. She couldn't move one of her hands and there were at least four of them.

For one hopeless moment Chloe thought of a yellow headline: Daily Planet Reporter torn apart by Possessed Mob. Maybe they weren't Braniac-controlled but they attacked aimlessly. They kept pulling, yanking, shoving; pulling her and as if they wanted to tear her apart.

Hands gripped her hair- forcing her head back, restricting her air supply. Chloe muffled a scream as her shoulder popped out of joint. The buildings loomed, blacker than the night sky.

Her eyes watered and a glint of gold danced across her vision. The Daily Planet was just a few buildings down, completely blacked out. It was not the house on the hill anymore but it gave her something to focus on long enough to drop and roll.

Once she hit the ground, they seemed to forget about her long enough to get a new toy. One of them, a hooded man with a clean face (another businessman?), advanced over her spot on the ground. That was the one that had grabbed her wrists. He looked like a predator.  
Did he know her?

Chloe's right shoulder wouldn't let her hold a gun steady, even if she had it. Her left, though…. She backed up, groping for something to protect herself with. If only they'd just forgotten about her…

Chloe swung with all the strength in her left hand and he fell, the razor sharp fender in his shoulder trickling rusty blood. His small eyes narrowed and he threw himself toward her. She ducked her shoulder into the wall and let him blunder into it, pulled a thick firearm from his belt. His curses drew all eyes to her, as if all her attackers were awaking from a zombie-like trance. Or going back into one.

She wasn't going to take the chance. Chloe ran past the asphalt where he'd fallen and hoped the mob's vision was not any better than hers in the dark.

Inside, she turned the bolts on the first three doors in front of her office. She didn't hear glass breaking…yet… She was armed now, but the gun had only so many bullets.  
Chloe dived under the desk. Apparently she was not the first person with that idea. Jerking her hand up, she made out the petite figure of Lana.

Before she could drop the gun, Lana shied away from her, ramming against the corner of the desk. She screamed then because she was already hurt.  
Chloe had been pretty sure part of her scalp had been torn out, out there. She'd fared better than Lana had. Lana's hand was impaled clean through, oozing blood. She looked like she was in shock from the blood loss already.

Chloe's white shirt was probably unsanitary and she was no paramedic but…"You've got to wrap it up." She tore the decorative frills off her blouse, and for once didn't think of modesty.

"There were no bandages..." Lana whispered.

"Did the crowd do that to you?"

"Zod did this to me."

"Did you say Zod? Zod inside Lex?"

"You knew that too." Lana blinked up at her accusingly.

"Zod?"

"He just vanished; he needed to get something from the Pentagon."

The second part of the plan. The first, disabling the infrastructure… the second… a weapon of some kind…maybe something nuclear. She had to warn Clark.

"What was it?" Chloe blurted out, loudly enough that she could barely hear the thump of the glass.

"I didn't wait there to find out. I'm not you, Chloe. I couldn't do anything to him. He wanted...heirs... a world he could remodel. There is nothing of Lex in there anymore."

"Were you coming to ask Clark to stop him?"

"Clark doesn't trust me and I can't trust him either. Look out there Chloe. This is the closest to safe… I have."

Chloe could hear the pounding now. The mob was trying to get in. And succeeding, apparently. If they found the destroyed part of the wall….

Lana shook her head for her to keep quiet, holding a bloody finger over her lips. Not that.

"I knew he was going to find me, the first thing. He's here. I'm so sorry…."

Chloe had never counted herself as a squeamish person, but she started to want to be. There was a gap in the skin, right between the bones. The kind of –being---who could choose to do that was worth running from.  
It made logical sense. If Clark could go from Smallville to Metropolis in a minute… this Zod guy….

The second door gave and about that time there was a sharp rush in Chloe's ears; the softer sound of just one pair of footfalls. Slow footfalls.  
He'd come to collect.

Lana didn't say anything but her eyes were telling Chloe that she would have sprayed all the bullets out wildly. She squeezed her eyes shut and hid them under her curtain of hair.  
Chloe was the one with the gun.

One minute Chloe's pulse was pounding in her ears, a minute tremor going through the door. Zod would tear it right off.

She would aim right at the throat, a perfect headshot, harder to miss there. She had only time for one bullet with Zod. If she killed his vessel… maybe his job would be a little harder.  
Zod might live on, and if Clark ever found his other way, there would be no take backs.

Chloe's hand was shaking like there was a tornado blowing through the room.

Clark hadn't been able to kill his friend. He had loved Lex, no matter how twisted he'd gotten. If Clark hadn't been able to do it, she had to be the one to take Jor El's advice.

Destroy Clark too? The door swung open. Chloe jerked the gun down and shot.  
See if he could take over the Earth like that.

* * *

Chloe's eardrums rang with the aftermath of the bullet and a scream of pain. It was a higher scream, a few decibels higher than Lana's. A guy's voice, she thought. Not Zod's. Familiar…

Thank god it was not Clark, back from saving her; this guy was too short. Chloe didn't know how she propelled herself over the desk, not caring if it was one of the mobs people.

Her stomach dropped. Jimmy Olsen.

"You shot me!" he gasped out.  
His was a familiar face if one night stands, drunk in the dark, counted. He fell back against the door and Chloe knew just what was bleeding.

She wanted to cover her mouth and shrink back, but she wouldn't. This is something you only read about in James Bond books. No…

Jimmy looked down, his mouth a scarlet 'O'.  
"You shot my…Clara-Chloe… I think you… oh god no."

"Jimmy. We are going to get you some help."

Chloe's finger stumbled over the three simple digits…. At least the cell system was working for now. Not quick enough.  
She nearly bit through her lip. They had to have one free phone line in there. The voice on the other end of the line was too calm.

"Someone's shot. The Planet building..." She started to say.  
Before she was finished she got a yes.

"You're going to be okay, Jimmy." She hated when her voice got like this. Choked. She sounded like a little girl. If only she hadn't been so reckless in saving Lana.

Jimmy wasn't looking down, and he looked like his knees were going to buckle.

"They're coming." Chloe tore out part of the other sleeve, reached out…  
He tossed the stapler from the desk and shattered the glass pane behind her.

"Shut up! Stop. Let me have my last moments. I'm dying! You murdered me."

He sank down to the floor, knees curled against his chest, reaching for something else to throw.  
Chloe held up her hands.

"It's okay; I'm not going to come closer. Jimmy…"

"This is because I didn't call, wasn't it? I just wanted—to have fun. I'm sorry! I thought you weren't a crazy *****."

There was no more pounding out there, maybe the mob had taken to their heels at the sound of the screams.

Lana crept out from behind the desk, from behind the curtain of hair, a bloody angel. She held up her hand, and settled near the wall.

"I promise you're going to be fine if I am." she said to Jimmy. "Pretend it's barely even a scratch. It's all connected. I learned that in yoga class. You can do this too."

Jimmy bunched his face up under the pain and bit his tongue.  
When he looked up at Lana, not really hearing what she said- looking; Chloe knew that look.

Five minutes (twenty?) later, three paramedics and a policeman got in, bringing in the blue blankets to cover him on the stretcher.

Jimmy caught a glance at the red stain against the blue, whispered 'oh shit' this time, and fainted.

* * *

So there Chloe was, fingers clenched, sitting in the burned out hospital hallway. The way unconsciously parted for the innocuous farm boy. She didn't stay there long. Clark got to her so fast so fast that she wondered that he didn't shift into super speed. She was just happy to see him.

"Clark. Oh my God. I thought you were dead."  
Clark's arms swung her around and he was so refreshingly solid and real that Chloe forgot that he would see the blood all over her.

"So did I, for a minute."

"Where did you go?"

"Somewhere I don't want to get sent to again." He said. They weren't exactly talking an angry mob either. Chloe took in the constant buzz. No one noticed them. They were just more people to sidestep, more bloodied bystanders.

The words barely whispered past her lips.  
"Zod?"

"He's in there now."

"Lex?"

Clark closed his eyes, a smile barely dancing over the corner of his mouth.  
"Alive. He's going to wake up with a headache from hell but…"

Clark had managed to save everyone without her collateral damage.

Chloe jumped at the screech of a stretcher's wheels. The nurses were wheeling another patient past them, not into Jimmy's room, at least.

Clark looked down at her with perplexed eyes. "Who tore out your hair?" Clark asked, gently. "What happened?" I just shot someone, thanks.

Ahead of them, a nurse kicked up a racket about there being no more beds. At least that was an excuse. Chloe loosened her hands on Clark's jacket, (they'd fisted) and shook her head.

"The crowd got a little wild. In short I got turned into a pull toy."

A stretcher wheeled its way between them.

Clark wasn't letting it by so easy.

"Your shirt is torn. Did they…do…anything?"

"Nope. I'm fine." Chloe pushed herself back, barely avoiding the metal rail. "Something tells me this might not be the time to catch up."

"When do you think it will be? We need to talk." Clark continued in a piercing whisper.

Chloe closed her eyes for that minute because his voice sounded so personal. It had become reflex. People were staring at them. Before she could shrivel up and die, he smoothed a big finger against the back of her head. Yeah, that really said 'nothing to see here'.

The stretcher hadn't moved away from beside them and Chloe's face burned temporarily. It wasn't just the people that she didn't know. Just a few feet away… Lana was standing right by the door to what they called a room anyway.

Clark felt different; he'd saved the word just like the hero he was supposed to be. Like he was not just a teenage boy anymore.  
"Um... Chloe... before I left... there was this moment. We had this--- moment."

Chloe opened her mouth to say something but her lips felt dry. Well, it was the end of the world…

"See…We really need to talk about it." Clark said to her.

Teenage Clark would have noticed that Lana hadn't talked to him again. First thing. Instead he looked down, eyes making wavering contact with the dirty tiles, and lifting, to meet hers again, blue and killingly serious.

Maybe, Chloe thought, she'd just gotten too used to second guessing what Clark was supposed to feel.

"You can have the seat by the window if you want to, Chloe." Lana finally said, behind them.  
Clark whirred like someone had lit a Kryptonian match under him.

Lana.  
Maybe he just hadn't seen her.

"Clark." Lana nodded tersely, as if that was an effort.

"What happened to your hand?" He was far more hesitant to talk now.

Chloe caught one second of Clark nodding back, the look back in place. His eyes. They could seem personal to anyone, anywhere. That was just how he operated. She felt a little cold now.

They were saying something about Lex, not even facing her anymore. The hospital noise remained undimmed. She could almost lose their voices in it. There had to be something she could do out here.

"I'll just… let you guys talk." She said.

Then Jimmy started screaming again.

* * *

When Davis Bloome rushed though the doors of met Gen he got the distinct impression that people were feeling sorry for him. Of course the lights were flickering. And maybe there was more screaming going on than AM rock radio.

He was going into the ER. He had the drugs for the critical patient after all. He was green, but he was their only volunteer on this particular assignment.

"Bloome, you're up then."

Dr. Jansen with the perfectly straightened hair gave him a once over, the toes of his scuffed shoes to his worn scrubs, last to his face. It was a look that Davis was vaguely familiar with. You don't look like much, you'll have to do.

Davis looked straight back. He could deal.

His training partner shuffled by him muttering, 'I hope you survive' under his breath. "There's a psycho in that ward." He'd said.

Davis pulled up the medicines, half shrugging, keeping the empty gurney straight. There was someone he could help in that hospital room. He could make a difference.

He didn't just have to be just Davis Bloome, charity case here. It was still called on the job training, wasn't it?

Maybe Davis would have understood that meaning of 'psycho' if they had been able to get in. As it was the beds were barricaded by more than four nurse aide's holding one man still.

"He's not letting anyone touch him." A nurse whispered. There was a clatter of heels; Dr. Jansen meticulously picking her way to the head of the bed.

So it could have been delirium- maybe the patient had gotten hit with something from out there. The reaction with the morphine being pumped into his system…. That had been the news on the radio- the communists were trying to take over, knocking out power and trying some massive mind control drug.

Her polished voice rose over the chaos. "Calm down, Mr. Olsen."

"James Olsen!"

"Mr. James Olsen, we're going to give you something for the pain. You won't feel a thing."  
The bed rattled, swaying on its wheels. The patient slapped away her hands, and the needle of the painkiller went rolling across the floor.

"You can't. I'll be helpless if she…comes back here! She shot my nuts off! And you're telling me to relax?"

"And who—"

"You should be keeping that harpie away from me. She caught something out there. Those people are all zombies. You've got to throw her out. Please! "

"Now, Mr. Olsen. Please understand. This is the only safe haven we have now… We can't do that."  
The doctor brandished a needle just of his sight.

"She destroyed me! Of course you wouldn't understand. You're a woman!"

"Of course not." Dr. Jansen jabbed the needle straight -into the mattress as the patient squirmed away, off the hospital bed, falling in a tangle of tubes. Taking her with him.

She fell quickly, mouth open with frustrated dialogue. The needle on the floor must have jabbed her.

"Someone sedate him!"

The rest of the hospital room seemed to be frozen in place.

Davis was through the opening in seconds- he wasn't quite sure how, hand over his wrist before Mr. Olsen accidentally sedated one of the nurses, too.

"I didn't mean to." The blonde guy struggled free, eyes wide. "Man, you've got to listen to me…" he whispered.

"I'm Davis Bloome. You're going to be fine."

"No! I'm in d---anger!" he babbled, brandishing the bag of saline solution.

For some reason, keeping the needle steady came easily to Davis. He barely noticed the salty liquid dripping all over his face and uniform. Jimmy? James? didn't managed to knock anyone else out. He would sleep okay now.

Sure, quick thinking, smartass. Davis stood up in the middle of the hospital room, acutely aware of the ten eyes on him looking for some kind of direction.

Down the hall, another alarm dinged, and another patient rolled through the doors. "Coming through!" someone hollered.

The doctor was sleeping like a baby. What was Davis going to do with all those patients?

* * *

When the generator gave out, the first thing to go were the lights. The sound level exploded with barks of orders, the thumps of panicked feet reverberating in Davis's head like a heavy gong. Your senses were supposed to start going haywire after about thirty-six hours without sleep. This was five too early.

Davis just kept talking and hoped she could hear him.

"Just relax. You're going to be fine. Okay?"

Martie/Martha-had been the fifth patient Davis saw in five minutes. Three inches worth of glass were poking out of her chest, and the doctor's removed those. She reminded him of the woman who found him the second time he ran away, the kind of single mother who made you feel safer than the 'good' foster homes you found yourself passed through the rest of your life.

"Remember Bette-you want to see her."

"Tell Bet-" She struggled out her daughter's name as far as she could . Her breaths were getting softer and softer, barely even there.

Davis had oxygen. That's all he could do, at least until the next ER doctor got in. Davis closed his fingers over the tank in the pitch black. He couldn't even see her, felt tentatively over the ridge of the rail. One inch to the left or right, one misjudgment or teenage clumsiness and that was it for her. She was going to die without it.

He didn't know why he was even opening his eyes, as if it would matter. I'm Paul, give me a miracle. He blinked as a small pinprick of light circled the wall behind them. A figure lit with an ethereal glow. If this was his miracle, he certainly wasn't acting properly awed. "Over here!" he called out.

The beam circled around again, a few rays making their way to the stretcher. He could hear the shift of low heels against the parquet floors. A dark shadow with halo of short blonde hair.

Davis winced as the flashlight shone into his aching eyes.  
"I've got it." She breathed.

What he had taken for an angel or an illusion born of 24+ nonstop work hours was just a young woman. A very—beautiful one. All he could really see was her eyes, focused and green over Martie's head, but they felt-familiar somehow.

Davis took the mask, turning it upside down so it wouldn't touch the glass. She seemed to know what to do. The flashlight didn't skitter away at the sight of Martie's bloody neck.

"Now hold it there, and take deep breaths." He had repeated the same thing countless times, but this time the words had to struggle out.

No response. Davis found himself stumbling over the first verse of the Hail Mary in his head. His eyes hurt. The young woman's eyes kept firm on his.

And the miracle was that after a minute, Martie was breathing.

Gingerly, the girl shone the beam back at the wall behind him again.  
"It looks like she's going to make it. You know her?"

He'd first seen her coming into the ER four minutes ago.  
"Just now. She really loves her daughter."

"She's lucky you were here to remind her. Your uniform says paramed, not empath." She peered at him, looking at his face first, eyes shifting to his uniform up and down slowly. Mostly Chloe thought that he was the first complete stranger saving people that she'd seen care in this place. It made it easy to forget all the rest.  
"Next time I get dragged in here, I want you on my watch."

That left them there staring at one another over the stretcher, the flashlight beam dancing between them. She had pale skin, pointed chin. Soft eyes. Davis realized they were easy to get lost in. She wouldn't look away. It would have been safe to chalk it up to the sudden closeness of strangers in danger averted.

Instead, he found himself opening his mouth to say something-anything- to prolong it. There were half a dozen conversation openers he could have used, like 'you get brought here often?'  
His partner would have given her a ready pick up line. For the first time, Davis realized he almost wished he could ever be the kind of guy that ever would be able to use one. The kind of guy who could afford to get that close.

"You were my guardian angel for a minute there." he said. A good enough start. (Davis knew how to be polite. You said 'thank you'. Or in less coherent moments 'you were amazing'. Not "Who are you?" right off the bat.)

She smiled anyway. "Chloe Sullivan. Daily Planet." Chloe. When Chloe put her hand out over the stretcher, Davis realized awkwardly he was still holding the oxygen mask.

She drew her hand back, but not before he noticed it was covered in blood. He wanted to ask if she was a patient,

"You make a good… wing person, Chloe."

"Any more calls to get to?"  
Only about a hundred.

"I'm free." She plowed on. "Free to come on if you like, I mean."

Davis knew what she wanted to mean by that. Knew it wasn't safe. She was a patient at this hospital, not his training partner. But she understood this. Knew what it felt like.

He always kept his distance. For a moment Davis had a sense of something, a deep dropping in the pit of his stomach, a premonition. This was going to change everything.

He said the word as soon as hers left her mouth."Yes."  
Davis lost sight of the blood in her smile.

"Then I'd say you've got yourself a wing person. We'll shake on it later."

Chloe blew the hair out of her eye. That would do.

* * *

The second generator came on an hour later. By then they had gotten about forty patients and they just kept coming. Davis was lost in the deluge when the doctors moved in.

Chloe occupied her spare time looking for where Lana and Jimmy had gotten lost to in the shuffle. In the room, Jimmy was actually asleep, not wearing the expression of perpetual agony. Lana was dozing in the chair to all appearances. But when Chloe caught sight of her own Glock tucked neatly in Lana's lap she felt like hightailing out.

She didn't of course.  
And after offering the customary reassurances, 'I'm sure you didn't shoot them both off'- Lana handed it to her, butt first, wordlessly. Chloe had never wanted to see it again. "You could use that in case, Zod…"

Lana shook her head.

"I'm an artist… I paint things. And punch a few bags once in a while, but Lex has-had a way of convincing me to. I wouldn't be able to do it. You're the kind of person who knows how to use this without a flinch."

"I'm not."

"Maybe no one's that kind of person- but you tried. I've always thought you could only pull the trigger if you were desperately in love with someone. But you… would have done that for me. I can trust you. I'd feel a little safer if you had it."

Chloe had no choice really.  
That's the way she ran into Davis, smack dab in the middle of the hospital hallway with that terribly efficient step of his. The gun clobbered him in the hip and went skidding across the floor.

She ducked to catch it before it got underfoot. Apparently he had that idea too.  
They bumbled into each other and he got it two seconds quicker. He had warm skin. Another parallel to Clark she didn't need to get into right now.

"Hey, Chloe?" He said 'sorry', then something about coffee and she didn't hear a word after that.  
He looked different in the light. His hair was brown as opposed to black like she thought and he wasn't quite as tall as Clark. He had dimples when he smiled.

It would have been impossible to forget his voice, though. How many people had he coached through operation chaos with her- forty, more?  
Chloe realized if she didn't say something soon it was going to look an awful lot like she was giving him the once over.

"I'm not camping out for a news story on mobsters, just in case. I know the people in there." she said, as if that made any sense in context.

He looked at her, the gun, her again.

"…That James Olsen?"

Chloe nodded painfully, knot back in her stomach. This was the point where she had to stop distracting herself. He hadn't run screaming yet, maybe that was something. Davis just sank on the floor against the wall and patted the seat beside him. Chloe sat, not noticing the gaping tear in the frills of her shirt. Davis cleared his throat and looked at her face.

"The mob got into the Planet…and a friend and I… I just shot…"

Davis just listened; maybe that's what got the whole ugly story out. Clark didn't know.

"You?" she finally asked. He was just trying to stay awake. Just when she thought he had to have fallen asleep, he volunteered something.

"James had a shot of Alhadrovan. He has about seven hours of sleep ahead of him." By then, maybe they'd get to treating the non-critical cases. They weren't treating anyone who wasn't dying apparently. That didn't mean he wasn't.

"May I?"

He turned her hand over, probing carefully enough that it didn't sting too much. The skin was washed clean now but the marks gave it away.

"There still may be remnants of rust in the wound. You should have that looked at. I'll be your first volunteer."

His voice was professional enough. But…there was something to the way he said it, like they could have been alone in a dark place-their place. That intimacy terrified and excited her all at once. Maybe she was just thinking too hard.

By the time he got a 401 call- a guy with a fender in him, her hand was swaddled with gauze and covered with something she didn't know the name of.  
Davis stood up in a swift movement, like a very non-arthritic person. Chloe bit her lip and stared at the way his inexplicably damp uniform clung to the lines of his--- back. He was attractive. That part of it was not complicated.

"See you?"

"I'll be right here."

And she was. Chloe didn't really enjoy her acquaintance with the wallpaper quite so much, but found some comfort in patting the gauze down and getting something warm in her. Only later she realized that the cup of coffee she'd just finished had been his.

* * *

Daydreams notwithstanding, it was a welcome change to play hero consultant when Clark got back.

It had been four hours. He looked a little pale, and he was sweating like he had a Kryptonian fever. Singlehandedly trying to restore the destroyed power sources in all of Metropolis did that. That was not to count the mobs, either.

The next two rooms were tuned into various radio warnings, theories about the chaos being a blanket for nuclear attack…. No mass speculations about alien invasions yet. They would have been closer than they thought.

"Why is this happening now?"

When Clark sank down into Davis's abandoned spot, he was wincing at the noise level.

"Let's walk." he said. And walk they did, through the darker spots of the hall. Chloe had a hard time seeing, had to stumble into the wall more than once. This part of the hospital looked abandoned, but she doubted it gave Clark's super-hearing much respite.

He looked afraid, like the universe's perpetual punching bag. And Chloe had no answers, except for the fact that Fine was Braniac and she doubted all connections would go post-apocalyptical all on their own.

"Braniac would have the ability to completely jam the communication like we're seeing now if he had a plan B up his sleeve. In theory. "

"You don't think I stopped Brainiac."

"You banished Zod, Clark. You never banished Braniac. He's trying to finish what they started."

"Where would you go first, if you were him?"

"Where was Zod going?"

Clark blinked owlishly at her.  
"I don't know."

"Lana said something about him needing something from the Pentagon…"

Clarks face darkened.  
"If he doesn't take DC…. It'll all be fine. I hope."

Chloe caught up with him when he was halfway to the exit. Superspeed wasn't something he could risk in here without severely injuring somebody, or something.

"How are you going to stop him?"

"I'll open the portal and push him through if I have to."

It didn't take her two seconds to realize just how stupid the plan was. He didn't even know where Braniac was, not really. After just barely surviving whatever that was… he was going to bumble into another storm of impossible odds. It was Clark.

She had to run to keep up with his long steps.

"You need to find out as much as you can from Lex, get a real plan…"

"You're a life saver, Chloe. If I don't come back…Thank you for everything."

He shouldered his way past the heavy glass doors into the dirty alley. No one stopped him. The security guards had long since been sent away to guard the main exits.

He was going to get himself killed out there. Chloe grabbed at his sleeve.

"Don't be a martyr-Clark!"

She felt the wind on her face and he was gone.

Closing her eyes, Chloe walked back to the door. He had to be fine. He was Clark. Blind luck was one of his gifts.

The back of her neck prickled. Apparently not one of hers.

"Well, well, look what the cat brought out." Chloe's insides chilled at the voice. Just across the flimsy chain-link fence was the man in the hood. And his knife.

She didn't have to check her pockets to know what she'd find. No tazer, no gun.

"I was wondering when you'd come out to meet me." He cooed.

Just three feet away, the door back into the hospital had locked behind her.

* * *

**Endnotes:**

1) Yes, Chloe has a personal stalker and it's not the good kind. Who hee ho hum....  
2) There is a different meaning to streetwise Davis, here. I want you to guess.  
3) Also. Jimmy, yeah, I'm really, really sorry. As you can guess, it wasn't a literal but metaphorical death. Call it my revenge for his little opening line from Zod. Maybe. I actually give him a better storyline than the show did and a ship of his own?

Next up, Chloe and Davis get closer (MUCH CLOSER!), Davis becomes acquainted with his darker half, Lex may be the key to stopping Braniac, Jimmy forms a functional relationship... no really!

**Every bit of feedback helps.** ;)


	2. part two

When Jimmy Olsen woke up, there were all manners of questions buzzing around in his head. The world was really screwed up if he could still think without his manhood. (Not that he wasn't feeling a panic attack coming onto him like he used to dream a dozen hula girls would.)

He couldn't look away from the ceiling, or down. He couldn't feel anything below the waist.

But he did know there was someone in the room with him. A girl with dark hair if corner of his eye was still seeing right.

She was drinking something perfectly -not slurping one bit. Not smiling either. All her hair in order. (Not an occasional wispy lock. No inappropriate energy lighting up her eyes.) Not dangerous. Perfect. Just like a nice girl was supposed to be.

"They've been handing out orange juice." She said. He hoped she wouldn't go on about the hospital or wallpaper or get excited about anything. His head would probably start hurting.

She didn't. She put a juice bottle right next to his hand, and when he didn't start drinking, said- "You should drink some. So you can get better."

"I don't know if I can move my hand."

"You just turned your head." She said.

"That's different."

"Come on. The sooner you're better, the sooner I can get out of here."  
Jimmy-James Olsen tried. He did. He didn't want to have to uncap the bottle and look down, but his weaknesses had always been with feminine wheedling, coaxing voices.

"I'm scared."

"Don't look at the blood, then."

"I still know it's there."

The cap wouldn't come off. At just the thought, Jimmy's hands were shaking.

She didn't offer to help. Wasn't that what girls were for though, to spoon feed you your juice when you were desperately critically injured?

"Will you hold the other?" he asked hopefully.  
(He knew the rules. Jimmy Olsen's rules 101. Bros before hos. Only hit on girls in love with other guys for one night stands. Don't call them in the morning. Don't date for over two weeks. Don't make the moves when at work.)  
This was a _hospital._

Lana looked down at his clammy hand. Saw the corners of his eyes a little red rimmed-and his eyes big and hazel and not! blue, staring at her of course. That's just what boys did.

After what seemed eternity, she held her hand delicately out. Her small fingers were limp and light. She had perfectly groomed nails. Not flat from keyboarding.

Jimmy slurped his orange juice and tried to think of a Sinatra line to give her. None of them seemed to quite fit her though. It was too soon for the 'all I long for' one. He ended up saying nothing.

After a while she asked.  
"Do you want to talk about something? I've been told my presence is soothing."

Jimmy was still scared. Not smooth.

"What if I'm not a man anymore? It must be impossible to imagine-If that happened- I won't have a life after this. My life is over."  
(What if he started loosing his facial hair? Grew boobs? He'd seen that on Ripley's.) Jimmy's eyes watered.

Lana looked at the blinds where the window would have been, if it wasn't apocalyptical and ashy out there.

"I think I'd understand. I lost my- my friend. And my—stalker- went on a rampage and will probably kill everyone. No one trusts me. I was the reason you got shot. "

"My parents think I'm obnoxious. I don't know where my brother is. And I have no girlfriend." Poor little Henry had been out at school.

"My parents died when I was eleven..." Lana whispered.

Jimmy didn't have anything to say to that.

_  
_

* * *

The hooded man smirked and pushed up to the fence. Rattled it. Chloe could see the knife glistening in his jeans pocket.

"I take it you haven't come by for a friendly chat."

"You might be right. We have … problem. That little present of yours is going to leave a scar. No one does that to Charlie, hon."

Somehow to Chloe, his chattiness was worse than the silence. The metal jingled as he started to climb over, taking his time.  
He was enjoying this.

"You attacked me!"

"I know what you are. Spotless reporter. Above all of us. Spoiled thing, crowing on about the chaos that is Metropolis when you could change that."

"Whatever you think… I have nothing to do with whatever happened to you. I was defending myself." Chloe stared at the metal barbs at the top of the fence.

"I know that. But you can fix everything for me, real good."

He had his hands at the top of the fence now. He kicked with his foot and the metal fence shuddered. One more minute. I'm coming to get you.

"What do you want?"

"Just your heart, baby." Chloe slammed the ladder on his climbing fingers. The barbs cut into his face. He dropped to the ground, cursing and covering it. He'd have scars there, too.

His voice warbled out. Childlike.  
"We were having a nice talk. Now why you have to go and do that?"

Chloe heard the fence jingle again. Heard the ladder move and scrape against the floor. Heard the little singing sounds of the bricks in the wall. From his expression he could have been doing it, could have been meteor infected. Crap. Maybe she could pretend not to notice.

"Expect more where that came from if you don't stop trying to assault me."

"Now you're just being ugly. This is going to be a mess."

He scrambled up the fence like what he'd done before was all child's play.

"That wasn't nice. I mean, after all, we know each other. I might just have cut my pound of flesh out. You owe me."

Chloe pounded at the glass with her fists and yelled.  
She'd researched this hospital for an article once. The glass was soundproof, super-durable. Layered. Built for invasions. Her only chance was that someone in that completely abandoned wing to hear something. Someone with really good ears.

He dropped to the ground in front of her. She backpedaled until she reached the glass door, shifted so she was out of its way.

"I don't understand why you're doing this."  
She needed to delay him until she found a brick, anything. She cowered behind the ladder. It would be harder for him to stab her like that. Or do what he wanted.

He dragged her and the ladder both out. Away from the door. Away from safety.

"They NEVER understand why."

His hand with the knife cut a clean nick through the collar of her white shirt. Chloe didn't cover the spot with her hands, didn't give him another opening. Women had to know what to do in cases like this.

"Be smart this time. Don't move. You won't even know it happened. "

Chloe closed her feet over the end of the ladder and tipped over his face. The blood leaked into his eyes.

His face changed from sociopathic and faux-charming to just sociopathic. No more mister nice guy. He grabbed at her neck and squeezed. Knife right under her sternum. That's the way the Aztecs cut out their human hearts.

Chloe lunged forward, vision darkening. He was already prepared for the ladder to fall. That did nothing. She stuck slippery hands between the ladder rungs aimlessly. She didn't care if she died. She was going to claw his eyes out.

His eyes flashed white and Chloe realized that she was frozen. He was a freak too. Don't move. Telepath, whatever. She just had to break his gaze. She couldn't, but she tried.

Chloe didn't hear a pained grunt. Her hands never made contact. She didn't hear anything. One minute the knife was cutting its gouge, the next there was a crack and the knife was out of his hand, along with some of his own skin.

Davis was in front of her, holding her gun straight.

Chloe sagged to the floor and wondered if she had passed out for a moment. She hadn't heard him. Hadn't heard the door open or the skid of shoes on the pavement. She didn't remember getting from point A in the middle of the dirty pavement to inside. The blood rushed in her ears.

She could hear Davis breathe. It was fine. She was safe now.

Charlie was crushed under the ladder, fingers outstretching for the knife. She heard steps. The slide of something across the floor.  
Davis walked closer, kicked the blade behind him. Crouched right in front of him.

Chloe pushed herself to her elbows. "Don't touch him!" She didn't want him getting a hold of Davis too. Davis couldn't hear her through the glass, but he turned. Chloe's heart went to her throat in fear.

But this was the thing. 'Charlie' was on the floor, breathing with a sucking wet sound. He didn't even move an inch or try to open his eyes.

When he turned back to him, Davis's voice didn't sound like the gentle paramedic's. It sounded hard. Like his.

"There are two bullets in this. Now either you get out of here and never come near this lady again or I'll shoot something else off. I won't miss."

Charlie glared without responding.

"We clear?"

"I'm not suicidal. Your girlfriend isn't worth it."

Charlie dragged himself a few inches on the ground. Was still again. The ladder came off him in twisted pieces, like something big had thrown it aside. Or Clark had.  
Chloe couldn't pull her eyes away as she fumbled the lock open. She needed to get that knife. She needed to know why.

Davis's arms were like iron catching her and holding her back, completely still behind the door. It was dark.  
"I need to…"

"We've got it." The knife was at her feet.

Chloe's fingers shook against his arms, adrenaline and fear.

"Shh. You're safe now." Davis whispered.

In lieu of crying. "Thank you."

Across the glass, Charlie had crawled away, a few more baby steps. He couldn't see them in here but Chloe still felt powerless.  
At least that's why she told herself she pressed her face to Davis's shoulder and tried to breathe in and out. He smelled like soap and sweat and safety.

"I didn't think anyone would come. How'd you find me?"

She couldn't see Davis's face.

"I thought I heard you call me." His voice was soft and a little wondering.

"I didn't exactly pick up the phone." Chloe stopped. Her curiosity complex was acting up again but she dampened the questions—as much as she could reasonably, anyway.

"However you did it. Thank you. You saved my life." Then. "What was that about?"

Davis didn't shift his eyes, arms complete still against her hand. Chloe thought that his voice sounded about five seconds from a panic attack. What had he just done?

"I don't know if I could give a pep talk like that."

"I grew up on the streets. I've---met other people like him."

Chloe's eyes were getting accustomed to the gritty dark. His hands gently combed through the ends of her hair. Davis hadn't looked away from the window either.

Charlie was still dragging himself along and it looked like something was broken. He had those powers of his and he was hardly going to rescue cats in trees with them. He was dangerous to everybody. Were they just going to let him go? The police couldn't even get out on the streets either, and Clark was--she didn't know where.

"I won't let him hurt you." Davis said, barely audible.

Somehow Charlie was on the other side of the fence, now. He wasn't getting up. Chloe pulled back as- very slightly, he waved his hand.

"Davis---"  
Ahead of them, a clear line cracked through the 'super-durable' glass. It and the bricks around them fell over them.

Chloe landed flat on her back. Completely conscious.  
Davis was locked in place over her, bleeding from the mouth. The glass had him completely pinned and his eyes were closed.

Listen to yourself, Chloe. You're not scared. That's not glass poking out of his side.  
"Wake up!"

_  
_

* * *

Clark's conversation with Jor-El had been brief. He hadn't ever stated that all Phantom Zone possessions left an impression, a 'mark' on the host. Half of it was just Clark needing to see Lex. To confront the man he hadn't been able to kill and make some sort of peace with himself before cutting him out again.

Clark should have been glad when Lex came to the door. Not the butler or any of the assorted staff they kept around the place.

"Clark. I never thought I'd see you here again." Clark could hear the lightest slur in his voice. Not humanly possible to hear, but that's one of the few things hearing like he did was good for.

"I thought you could use a friend."  
Lex didn't say those words. You said it first, Clark, remember, 'from now on we aren't friends'.

"You're violating the quarantine."

"Must be me then. The Kents are different, right?"

Lex's left hand was still on the door. For a moment Clark had a thought. He's not going to let me in this time. His other hand was behind his back. It's not like Clark would have shaken his hand, anyway.  
When they had met it had been handshakes, as friends, hugs and touches in timelines Lex didn't even remember. And now they were just---nothing again.

Lex wordlessly stepped away from it, a half-empty bottle of wine in his hand. Walked back to the couch.

This was not his Lex. There were one or two creases in his ever-pressed gray shirt and slacks. He looked hollowed out-like that dark core of him was gone and Clark wasn't making another of his stupid bipolar choices again.

His eyes were red. Like they had been the first time Clark had accused him of becoming his father.  
But this time it was different. He hadn't chosen to do it, completely. He was reading about what 'he'd' apparently done. Reports of destruction and ruin. A complete evil with his face. His PIs had probably dug up more.

"Have a seat." He said.  
Lex pushed aside the four different newspapers spread out on his side of the couch. That was it.

Clark hated this part.

"How are you holding up?"

"Fine."

He looked anything but fine and soon enough, it was his words that confirmed it.

"Have you ever read things-known that you've done them? What you were capable of? But not why or how? Of course not. I'm drunk. How am I supposed to fix this?"

Lex pushed his hand through the pile of papers. "Did you see the Daily Planet Headline Clark? This one?"

This. And this. And This. And This. He just wouldn't stop.

"Lex. Calm down."

The papers toppled and he let them.

Lex swirled the wine in his glass, leaned over his knees toward the fire, in a move that reminded Clark of fetal position or waking up alone with no one to find him.

"I've got to start somewhere. I could give out a billion in donations. That would be a start, right?"

"You could."

"I'd be buying the city. You wouldn't approve."

Lex was a remarkable drunk. He didn't even slur. Sparring over people's lives with a megalomaniac over coffee made it necessary to keep his wits about him. Clark had known that Lex. That was the Lex he wanted to comfort.

"You say I'm becoming Lionel. I may even be him to you now. But this is what happens when I try to break free."

But right now the muscle in his back was so tense that Clark wondered at how the frail bone didn't snap out of his spine.

"I can't- not have control. "

Clark reached out to brush his sleeve with his palm. That's all he had the courage for.

"This shouldn't have happened to you."  
Back when they'd started to fall apart Clark wondered what Lex would have been without the meteor shower. Still Lionel's son, using underhanded tactics for all his life. But he wouldn't have had material for his obsessive tendencies. He could have--- Clark didn't know.

His hand had lingered too long but Lex didn't shrug him away, yet. They weren't friends. Feeling foolish, Clark took it back.

Lex turned his gaze back to him by then, steel-colored eyes glowing in the firelight. Too late.

"I'm finding it a little difficult to process, Clark. You? came to be my shoulder." Clark hated this voice on Lex more than any of the others. Soft, disconnected, without nuance. Like nothing could ever touch him anymore.

"Why are you really here? You can just tell me the truth Clark. I'm not going to throw you across the room."

"I came to tell you something you've wanted to know for a while. I'm going to tell you why."

Lex's hands uncurled in his lap; he set the empty bottle on the floor. He was trying hard not to be affected. This was the secret he had destroyed their friendship over.

He looked so—beautiful; (men weren't supposed to be beautiful), Clark knew. But Lex had always had a way of making it look so natural and right, and the way of seeing Clark had known forever wrong.  
It didn't mean it was.

As soon as he opened his mouth he knew he was going to make up some ridiculous lie.

"Milton Fine was training me. I knew what he was going to do to you, but I didn't stop him. I had to be at the center of this. I was trained to be in it for years. I couldn't tell you."

"Black ops?"

"Gray- bordering on illegal."

"It's hardly as if it would have ruined my spotless reputation."

"Lionel's your father… he shaped you so you would have done anything to find out. About me. If he somehow found out…"

"So… Fine brought you under his wing and revealed all the government bluebook projects to you before going power crazy. And now that I may be helping, it's easy to tell me."

"That's pretty much it." Clark tried to smile, like he used to at Lex, once upon a time.

"There wasn't ever a day that passed that I didn't want to tell you…You've got to believe me. You were still a Luthor. I knew- what you were capable of."

"I wouldn't have said anything. I wanted you to trust me."

Lex closed his eyes and Clark thought he was hurting him.

"I wanted to trust you." Clark said. He did want to be the un-self-conscious boy he used to be for now. Bring Lex back to himself. Convince him of whatever he needed to be convinced of.

"What's so different now?"

"You know the stakes. You know why the chaos has to be stopped."

Lex opened his eyes again and smiled. Clark had become acquainted with hundreds of Lex's expressions over the years. He still couldn't read this one.

"You're getting better at lying, Clark." he whispered. "You can close your door on the way out." Clark pretended for the hundredth time that he'd never heard the faintest break in his voice.

_  
_

* * *

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two and a half."

"Now?"

"Three."

"Now?"

"Chloe…It's all in here." Davis winced and patted the side of his head, now coated with glass fragments.

"Keep going. I was pretty much howling over your dead body an hour ago and now you're snarking me."

"Six. You're trying to trick me."

Chloe smiled. Davis figured something had to be going right.  
When the asphalt crumbled in his hand as he'd dug them out, she hadn't run screaming. He thought he saw recognition in her eyes. More than that. Acceptance.

For him it was surreal, a little bit absurd, and horrifying. The glass was painted with his blood. He didn't know how he was going to explain it when they got back.

If Chloe had asked him what happened, he would have had no answers. He was lucky she was giving them to him.

"You're like he is. But. not. a killer and not crazy. Some of you are telepathic…others are just…really strong and invulnerable. You're meteor inflected, Davis."

What did that even mean? Davis caught her gaze and let out a slow breath, like he needed something- some way to know that it was alright.  
(He reminded Chloe a lot of Clark. And he didn't.)

"I didn't know."

"You don't find out right away. In three fourths of the cases it until your teens, some really emotional moment for the meteor powers to manifest. Are you sure you've never been in Smallville before?"

To be exact, he wasn't. He had no records before he was three. He'd just—appeared. But she was sure she could find out.

"There is nothing wrong with you."

It was one thing to know, namelessly that you were different…and another to learn this. Maybe this was what the blackouts came from. Growing pangs. He could have imagined something worse- murderous instincts.

"It doesn't have to make you crazy or a pawn. I have a friend who--." (Not Clark's secret. Chloe's mind hissed.) "My first boyfriend Justin. He had powers too."

"Boyfriend?" Davis choked out. A little bit of Chloe thrilled at the undertone of jealousy there.

He went insane and tried to kill me. Okay, Chloe thought; that was really the wrong way to be encouraging.

"Former." Chloe concluded pathetically.

She ended up telling him the whole story, anyway.

Murderous instincts. Maybe that was in a way, what he got. Davis had studied too many statistics not to give them weight. And there were times, when he'd woken up, even as a kid. And he knew. He knew. Something dark. Something more than he was seeing now.

Chloe kept talking about free will. People choose to be monsters, Davis. Look at the crowd out there. It's night of the living dead. They're regular humans.

He didn't have to lose his mind. He was still dangerous. Remembering what he'd felt when he heard her plead for her life, he knew it. He could be a killer.

But she was alive. He couldn't bring himself to regret it.

_  
_

* * *

When the nurse came in, post-procedure, Jimmy's first groggy question was 'Will they grow back?'

She didn't answer the first time. She was too absorbed with shuffling things (his papers), erasing his name from the little chalkboard on the wall.

"You can leave now. There are no chairs left and new patients are coming in. We're going to need this bed for someone else."

"Will they grow back?"

"What?"

""My— manpar---you know."  
Jimmy hated talking to female nurses. They didn't get the lingo. It was just-awkward.

"Oh you mean-the testis? There's no mention of them here. According to your chart, you were treated for a minor graze wound to the illonguil nerve, you may experience loss of sensation..."

"You mean they're there? They're there."

"The bullet also scratched your inner leg. You have one stitch."

Jimmy slumped back on the bed and started to laugh hysterically. The meds made his head feel floaty and Lana ran into the room, horrified by what appeared to be loud croaking.

"I LOVE YOU!" he shouted. Not that he really was sure if he meant her or the nurse or if it all, but hey- carpe diem.

He waggled an eyebrow and wondered if she had a boyfriend. All would have been well with the world if the nurse hadn't ambushed her.

"Okay, whoever you are- All non-criticals out in five minutes. Orders."

_  
_

* * *

Clark couldn't do anything to Braniac. He knew that even before he found him, before he tracked the blackouts to their source.  
Clark didn't know anything about his enemy. He could do nothing to him. And as long as there was chaos like this- he couldn't be everywhere at once, couldn't save everyone at once.

Braniac had everything now; he didn't even care about him.  
How could you kill a computer? Electrically fry it? He didn't have that power.

"You could kill me. But then my hold won't diminish and you'll lose every chance you have of fixing this pathetic planet of yours. That's the way it happens, Kal. You just have to watch your world burn."

Everything else had failed.  
After knocking eight times at the Luthor Mansion door with no answer, Clark was pissed. He pushed it open with a finger and it slammed against the wall

"Trying to break my chandeliers?" Lex's voice wafted across the room.

Clark didn't need supervision to catch sight of the screen. The transfer of company titles, a lot of jargon. Had he expected Lex to sit around and mope? Not when Lionel was conveniently missing and there was a takeover to plan.

"Is that all you can care about even now?"  
Clark would have bet he wasn't even searching for Lionel.

Lex answered without even looking up. He was supposed to look at him, dammit.

"I used to think you were the purest, most principled person I'd met. As a teenager, you had everything. You were everything I could never be, and wanted. I didn't even think you could be real. But it's not that is it?"

"People out there. You know what you did to them because you wanted the power Fine promised?"

"You're arrogant Clark. Of course I have to take control. It's chaos. I have to keep it together or people are going wind up in a whole lot of pain when this blows over."

It sounded logical. Everything about Lex sounded logical on the surface when underneath he was just a convoluted, twisting…  
There were always things under the surface between them now.

"You brought those men to attack my family in my house because you thought it would blow over, Lex. It's not going to blow over. You know what you did. You don't have look much further than the page one of the Planet.  
Deep down, you couldn't have done that on your own. No matter what scientists did to you or you think of yourself."

"And why are the stakes so high for you?"

"It's the world. Humanity. You used to care."

Lex watched him, gaze heavy.

"There's someone behind this. A---man." Clark almost said construct. What was he doing?

"I didn't stop him. I didn't even try. I wasn't ruthless. The end won't ever justify the means for me. I couldn't do it. Maybe I was wrong."

"I never expected you to quote the prince, even indirectly."  
Ask big brother Lex to do your dirty work, why don't you?

"I'm trying to say- I can't do this without you. I can't do this without knowing what's been done and what I have to stop."

"You want to fish whatever I did-everything out of my brain for some school project. I deserve to know why first."

"I'll tell you."  
Clark dug his fingers into his knees and stood up. It felt as if the secret was going tear its way out of him, too. The secret was all Lex needed to destroy him. But the alternative was worse.

And like all annihilation, the beginning was a rush.

"I am arrogant and superior, and I'm not your friend. From the moment we first met I knew I was going to lie and run and screw up your already twisted psych.  
I think you're worse that I am. You're a coward."

Lex closed the laptop.  
Clark had to do this. It was the only way. The end. The means.

"You wanted to find out about me, but it was never real. It was half assed. Pathetic. You could have hired more than a few thugs. You could have raised the stakes. You never did. That's why you will never get out of Lionel's shadow."

"Fucking with me again, Clark?"

Everywhere, across the walls were Katanas; Viking Broadswords hanging like child's toys. Fodder for his nightmares. Clark wondered if they ever made Lex feel protected.

"If you really hate what I represent all that so much, you could just take a swing at me, Lex. You like to keep it inside to justify being miserable."

"I'm not playing."

"Neither am I."

Clark tugged one off the wall, probably more expensive than his entire education. Slammed it right through his inexpensive suit jacket, over his heart. Pieces of the broadsword littered the polished floor like glass.  
_  
_

* * *

The whole blood on the shirt wouldn't be exactly easy for him to excuse away. Davis would have to do a little creeping into his pack and some bloody clothes disposal. It would look terrible to be crawling around the hospital.  
Not yet though.

Chloe stayed with him, halfway in the abandoned wing. She had to be sure he was fully recovered, she said.

Davis shifted his pocket radio through the channels. No music any more. Another riot. A warning for Metropolis general. A mysterious blackout at the Pentagon.

Davis felt the change in her.

Funny how Chloe didn't really panic when it was Braniac but as soon as others started coming out of the woodwork too, she got scared. What was one hero to all that?

Clark had zipped out of there like the world was on fire. Chloe gave a watery laugh. It was.

"My friend ran into the thick of it, you know? I wanted to run after him."

"What was his name?"

"Clark."

"Clark will be fine."

Davis knew this reassurance wasn't practical and had no basis in fact whatsoever. It was a jungle out there. Chloe's nails dug little soft crescents in his shirtsleeve and wound around his neck.

The stone walls around them were weak. Davis could hear the miniscule shifts in rock. Farther away, someone was dragging himself across pavement.

"Let's get you somewhere more than borderline safe."

"Could you wait a little?" she pled. Her voice had gone on her. Chloe didn't ever cry like this. (It wasn't-the attack. It wasn't Jimmy or the gun. It wasn't Clark.)

It just caught her at a bad time. That was all.

_  
_

* * *

In the hospital Davis fell back into the old patterns fairly quickly. People always needed saving. But it was in the back of his mind. When he pushed a stretcher he knew, just a little more pressure and it would twist and crack and the metal would be a useless heap.

Mostly he thought about how many more people he could help if he went all out. He didn't know how to.  
And every time he thought of powers, he thought of that guy out there, how easily his bones had broken and what he'd been about to do. Davis thought of how he would do it again and wondered if this was him, losing it completely.

It would have been easy to pretend she hadn't seen what he was. Chloe never said a word. Didn't treat him any differently. 'You want to talk about what happened to us back there, freak?' never passed her lips.  
But she wasn't here either. He missed her. Funny how something you had for a short time could feel like part of you.

Davis dozed against the wall. The third straight day of the schedule. Maybe, he'd thought, he could do without sleep.  
When he didn't, he dreamed a lot of things that his mind classified as screwed up. Charlie dragged himself back across the floor… and he felt that rage. He'd leaned over to pull him up (cuff him for the police, something).  
He was unarmed. Charlie's eyes widened and he wasn't dangerous, just sick, so sick. A jagged shadow fell along his face. The blood that speckled Davis's fingers burned at his skin.

Then, there she was. Chloe was coming. Closer and closer to him. (Closer to him and the blood.) Her face was hidden by shadows, her hair disheveled spun gold. Her heartbeat was one of the first sounds he heard, anywhere, anyplace. He knew her. It would have been impossible to explain otherwise. He recoiled in the corner so she wouldn't have to see. She looked down at his hands, into his eyes.

His head twisted at the gentle touch moving along his forehead, over his lips. He realized he was awake. Chloe was really there. She wasn't touching him, not quite, but it felt like she was.

"So are you getting real sleep any time soon?"

"This is sleep."

"I'll take that as a no and I count two hours until you start giving diabetics inhalers." Chloe was waving his work schedule under his nose.

"What?"

"You've been taking back to back shifts you're not even scheduled for the past four days."

"You found my locker?

"Broke into it, actually. It's not stalking when it's for your own good." He never figured her for the kind of girl. Driven to help people? Maybe he did.  
The shyness was out of her eyes.

"More people are being wheeled in. The talk radio—there may be a mob breaking in. We have to get them treated and out of danger."

"Reporter here. Number one rule of this kind of situation is hype." From what she knew, it was the friggin apocalypse, but she wasn't going to tell him that just yet.

"I don't think I even need to sleep." He protested.

Chloe shook her head, exasperated. The slight motion teased a strand of hair over her upper lip. "I was tempted to tell your boss that you weren't coming home and the babies needed their daddy."

"I'm not married."

"You just don't know it yet. Neither does your boss." Chloe leaned back against the wall. She looked so much smaller than he did like this. "Meet mommy. I always wanted to put my aggressive reporting skills to use. And no one will get jealous."

"They would." It was impossible to think they wouldn't. Actually Clark might. Davis had heard a lot about Clark.  
It looked an awful lot like Chloe was flirting with him, though. Accelerated heartbeat. Mostly she was worried.

The main doors slid open. Two patients needed him in ward one. He hated super hearing sometimes.

She put her hand on his elbow to get his attention, right under the sleeve. He could feel the blood pulsing under her skin. She had it.  
"You look half-dead, Davis. You're not some sort of…super-powered robot. You're human."

"I can do more."

"Not in the middle of a mainlining hospital in Metropolis. The witch hunts start quickly here."

"You know?" Maybe she was more wrapped up in all this than he knew.

"I've seen them. That's why there are superheroes with alter-egos. I work… I worked at a newspaper. People want to be saved but they also want someone to tear down. I never want that to happen to you. You're so new… to this. Please? For me?"

"I will. Soon." Just not now.  
If Chloe wanted to know the whole truth, he would have said he was afraid to stop because he couldn't sleep otherwise. He would have in a moment. The dreams, too, whatever Jung said.

"How about we meet up in an hour and you go to the ward? If…maybe, when we get out of here, you want to try helping people... If you still want to, I'll be here to help you with that. I won't tell. Anyone. Ever."  
She was treading familiar territory, afraid of some sort of rejection. Her gaze slid away from his, to the floor to his shoes. She was the kind to look at life head on.

"Yes."

Davis was getting to understand impulses. Her cheek under his fingers felt warm. Warmer than he'd felt since this whole thing started. Her eyes met his as she swallowed, and her voice sounded shallower.

"Either way, you won't be getting rid of me that easy. Someone has to wing for handsome, naïve paramedics, right?"  
I want to see you again.

"Thank you."

He wouldn't have heard her if he wasn't like this. "You'll make an amazing hero."

He saw jagged glass and blood and death and she trusted him. What was he supposed to do now? Leave? Pretend there was space between them? It was the way things were- safe.

"I'll see you?"

Chloe grabbed hold of his hand before he did though. "Does that mean it's a date? Or is this paramedic talk for two hours?"

He never made the logical decision to kiss her. If he had it would have involved more…speech. He would have said this wasn't about wanting a crutch or whatever she felt like so often. He felt something. (He felt a lot he was not supposed to feel especially when it came to her.)

It was her one, completely unguarded moment. Chloe hadn't been expecting that particular answer. His lips moved to form an explanation of some sort, and lost it to soft pressure.

Her eyes fluttered shut, and Davis could hear the quick staccato of her heartbeat. He hit the wall, freakish strength and all as her hands pushed against his shoulders. It seemed like all the hospital- the people were moving past them and this little space was perfectly still.

Her hands slipped lower down his back and his caught up. It was automatic, an old habit from carrying a switchblade in his pocket just in case someone tried to slit his throat in the street. But she wasn't trying to hurt him. His hand caught hers; tangled with her fingers. She made a hungry sound in her throat and tilted her nose into his cheek as her feet left the floor.

His hand slid away from her hair. When she hit the wall his hands followed and clawed grit from the wall just when his skin started to tingle with something predatory. To tear into her or get closer he wasn't quite sure. She tilted her throat up, held very still. His vision narrowed. But the small, small part of him that used to make sense was telling him to be careful and they were in a hospital hall for god's sake. He'd never done this-not publicly, not like this, when it meant…this. To someone he cared about this much.

Maybe she could know it for him-at least she seemed to, tugged at his collar, scratching.  
When he put her back on her feet she was panting and he could barely see. His hand left her cheek, rubbing across the pinkish flush there. Her eyes were wide.

"Oh." She said. Her voice sounded…different. The small sense of triumph inside him cooled and dissipated. She took a step back, a small one from the corner where they'd been. Another. "Davis, I…"  
Then she was halfway across the small corridor.

Dr. Jansen brushed by, jerking away at the last minute. Letting go of the stretcher behind her. "Bloome, if you're done with your extracurricular activities, I could use a hand in ward one."

The doctor kept her eyes glued to him, eyebrow raised, waiting for an affirmative sign. Blocking Chloe from view. Davis wondered if he could speed past her quick enough to talk to Chloe without getting fired.

Two hours, Chloe said quietly. Then she was gone and he could hear her footsteps moving as fast as her heart had been.

Davis ran a hand over his forehead. After he'd practically assaulted her in the hallway; he needed to explain. To try. But there was something about the way she looked. If he wanted to run her off, he just had.

_  
_

* * *

Chloe nearly bowled over a couple of orderlies pushing an empty stretcher before pushing into the first door marked 'staff only' she found. Davis wasn't following, unless he'd learned stealth technique was one of his abilities too.

She slumped against the door and covered her face with her hands. Her face was burning. She didn't even try to guess at what he was thinking. There was no sign she could wear that read-caution: relationship minefield. He was probably confused out of his mind. Especially since she didn't even know what was the matter either.

Okay. She did. Part of it was being so bottled up she'd practically initiated vertical sex with him in the hallway. She was the proper friend who hugged guy friends and gave them hands up when they needed it unless it was the end of the world… but Davis had to have heroic impulses, save her, look and act like she was more than Lana to him. Her hormones did the rest. He looked good in a uniform. There was no denying where her hands had wandered for all of twenty seconds.

She didn't want to use him, not even the slightest bit. That particular quibble never seemed to have bothered her before, but it had to the first time she'd been any more than mildly curious. The skin on her neck was still tingling hot and cold just where he'd touched. She kept thinking of the way he'd looked at her and….she was tingling.

Chloe was pretty certain she wasn't thinking of Clark, but maybe it was one of those unconscious things. Maybe it was just easier to accept that it was the memory of the guy she had fantasized she was having sex with the first time rather than the fact that she'd wanted someone who saw her as first.

Her head hurt. It was all so complicated. (Simple.) The tense, turned on part of her protested that she had better darn figure it out soon so she could wait for him in an empty corner of the ward with something nice on.

Chloe pressed a hand to her still-heated face, fingertips lingering on her mouth as she breathed out. It felt right. Maybe the best plan of action was to tell Davis everything. Start from the beginning. Then kiss him again.

She was a little bit scared but mostly too giddy to breathe. (She actually had a part of her that was wired to not!Clark. Who knew?) She was also an idiot for locking herself in the storage closet.

_  
_

* * *

One of Chloe's reporter rules: before the happily ever after, or the (optional) sexy times, get the apocalypse out of the way. The first thing she told Clark after he got her out of the closet was that she needed his help. And super speed and cloaking abilities.

Then he asked, "Can you give me some input?" He'd come for something about Lex again. Of course. As he recapped her on the brilliant plan to recover "Zod's" memories she wondered just why Lex was helping him. Maybe he had an attack of conscience. She had a few theories about that, but not much to add really.

At the Planet, she keyed in to the main database, overrode the code and tapped in the passwords to the pi license Perry had funded during a particularly gnarly hack into Luthorcorp files.

Chloe didn't tell him more of her reason's than she needed to. She got into a rhythm with Clark sometimes where it was just what they needed to do. Not them anymore.

"I should have been there."

"Well, I got rescued." Chloe tried to hide the catlike smile from Clark until she realized she was okay with him seeing it.

"Why are you doing this? You could just tell me where he is. We could turn him in." Clark definitely didn't think like Davis.

"This guy was no run of the mill stalker/rapist. He kept making odd references. I think he was working for somebody. And he kept acting like I knew something. Or I had something important. I want to find out that something first."

She un-wrapped the jackknife from its two plastic bags, pressed tape on one of the smudgy marks. A print.

In the very slim chance that they worked in the whole underground information database, she would have something. Chloe sighed in relief. At least the internet system was too widespread to collapse just yet. Then the world would really go insane.

"What about on your end?"  
While the computer started doing its massive catalogue, she turned to see Clark crushing a paperweight in his fist. He was definitely worked up about the Lex stuff. Maybe he'd made a really dumb deal-of some kind in exchange for the help. Maybe he was just being Clark.

"You said we had to talk." She told him finally, pushing himself out of Perry's chair.

She took a step forward and another, backed Clark into the corner by the desk.

"Chloe, what are you doing?" He mumbled, blushing. He reminded her so much of high school Clark she wanted to pat him on the shoulder.

"Recreating our moment."

They were just in the same position before, minus the fear. Clark held her gaze but never lost his breath. His eyes were the way they had always been, just missing that wild animal hunger that Chloe had seen in Davis's eyes when she stepped closer.

"It was important to me." Clark said.

"But you can't do it now, can you?"

It had been a beautiful moment where they were full of adrenaline and need and fear, and after it what was there? Maybe he'd just needed to hold onto something. Maybe that's where 'they' had existed, that moment.

Clark dropped his eyes. "I do love you. It's just…"

"I understand." Her voice could have broken, but it never did. "You love everybody. Why didn't you just say it?"

"Look things are confusing now."

"And?"

"I- didn't want to make you feel used. There's the end of the world, Lex, Lana, I don't even know…This meant a lot to me anyway-you're my first real girl who's a friend and. I think, I could love you. If we try…"

"Love isn't something you try out like a pair of shoes Clark." Instead of that ugly feeling stabbing in the gut, she felt light. She hugged him and his hand awkwardly patted at her back.

"Look…Chloe. This meant..."

"We're good." She said again, strangely free.

Clark looked at her a little suspiciously but that felt just right. Agape love wasn't so bad was it?

"And for the record- I think the reason you're getting so bothered over the whole procedure with Lex is that you love him too. Clark, he's got a girlfriend. I think." She ribbed. Chloe wondered just how much Lois was rubbing off on her.

Clark didn't look up at her, this time, stumbled over his words more than she'd ever heard before. This was a whole other level than Lana. Chloe thought about it. The lengthy tie straightening sessions, the camouflaged touches, the person Clark always ran from. It reminded her of…well… her.

"When I knew he was going to tear down the world, I knew I couldn't be Jor-El's son."

In a way, this catharsis of Clark's made a lot of sense to Chloe. Helped her know him better than four years of friendship.

"That doesn't mean we're going to set up house together. Or that I even trust him not to cut me down. It's circumstances, Chloe. We have to stop this…"

Clark's ears prickled when guns started going off across the street. Chloe pulled her gun cautiously into her lap. "Go on, save the world." She told him.

As he disappeared, the smile was still on her face. She almost forgot to be scared.

_  
_

* * *

Chloe got three search results for the print.  
Charles Saunders alias Martie Curevo alias John Maxwell. Small time hoodlum. Gambling debts the length of her journalism resume. An enforcer for the highest bidder and a suspect in three different murders. Off for lack of evidence every time. He'd been a test subject at 33.1 once.

He took on a whole lot of assignments until a week ago, when he'd started working for Curtis Knox.  
Curtis Knox was a golden boy with a dead wife, connected to the dissolved Cadmus Project. He'd used blackmail before and was looking for his own form of eternal life. He was rumored to have killed two mutants in an attempt to extract it from them. Their bodies had never been found, but their hearts had.

She'd seen him before. Just once. He was her new doctor. (If she had time she would have made a note to scratch him off her phone contacts before making sure he got his ass kicked.) As it was, Chloe didn't have time to start worrying about being infected herself.

Clark came back fifteen minutes later covered with soot and ash. It wasn't just the crowds being rough. They'd broken in somewhere, violently.

"You have to stay here now. Met Gen has been leveled." He said. "Lex and I need to get this done."

"What do you mean 'leveled'?"

It was just the beginning.  
There was not much time to save everyone and recover the memories and dismantle Zod's plan in the small chance that Braniac hadn't already enacted it and was there to send them to whatever place Zod was.

So simple to forget that they were all in there.

"Will you be okay?" Chloe nodded. Once he was gone, she loaded her gun and stepped into the dark.

(Clark was the first person Chloe ever loved. He was going to attempt something so massively stupid that he and Lex could both end up dead. But the first thought in her head was "Davis is in there.")

Chloe thought she would never get used to there being no caravan of ambulances at the scene of chaos. It was so ashy, she needed someone to show up to give her directions. She got the wrong one.

Charlie stood in front of her, face considerably restructured, powers in tact.

"One thing you should know about Charlie. He never stays down." He wibbled.

Chloe aimed the gun. "I know who you're working for. I know what you've lost- the string of gambling debts from here to Havana. There are two bullets in this gun. You can walk away now. "

"Charlie's going to do this. Charlie does his jobs." He said. He wasn't talking to her. His blade flicked, shining bright orange in reflections of the banged up emergency lights outside.  
Chloe wondered if Davis even had anything to defend himself with.

"You heard the screams in there. Cutting out my heart like some player in a demented Sleeping Beauty play won't help you. "  
She aimed the gun carefully. "One step closer and I will shoot them both off, you hear me? "

Charlie took one step closer. And howled.  
_  
_

* * *

**Endnotes:**

1. Charlie ties into Chloe's Dr. Knox's _Cure _storyline. I shifted him back a few years. Since Chloe didn't know about her infection, she didn't go to him for help. He decided to get her heart with help. You didn't think Charlie was your run-of-the-mill-stalker-bastard did you?


	3. part three

_Next part! Sorry for the wait!  
_

* * *

Just about the time the 'zombies' started breaking in, a dark haired paramedic ushered Jimmy and Lana to the vents.  
"You're not visible there. Get out of reach and try to keep quiet."

Davis, his uniform read. Jimmy recognized him but chose to ignore that fact. He'd been the guy to put him into that drug addled sleep after all. But it was hard to choose to hold a grudge after he was going down with his ship and all. Titanic was a tragic story. Not that going down with your ship wasn't kind of a stupid thing to do.

"I hope your head doesn't get torn off. Best of luck, bro." Jimmy said.

Davis just nodded. Taciturn guy.

"Is Chloe safe yet?" Lana asked. "If she got caught outside …"  
That seemed to get a reaction out of the broody type. He shook his head, jaw tightening, forgetting they were even there.

"She never made it into the North exit… I have to find..."

"Man, wait." Davis couldn't vanish before he'd replaced the vent, leave Jimmy here to be piecemeal.

Jimmy had a tiny suspicion that he was waiting for Chloe. It was always about the girl, even when they acted all noble. Jimmy didn't begrudge him that.

Jimmy got up to the vent first, courtesy of some fancy footwork. He held out a hand to Lana and she took it rather enthusiastically.  
"Careful… stitch," he forced out.

Lana couldn't help it; one of her hands wasn't so good for supporting herself on the way up.

"Dammit, woman, you're heavy."

Then, Jimmy couldn't explain it, but she was inside the vent, the cover was on. Boom! There was something weird about that guy. Or he was just really desperate.

Lana squeezed Jimmy fingers, once inside. "No one has ever said that to me before."

Then they crawled. They hadn't gotten far before they started to hear the breaking in. Shouting and metal against assorted hard surfaces and a few bullets, steel on flesh.

Lana had stopped. Jimmy couldn't shake the image of a green hand reaching past the vent and yanking her out feet first, tearing her into gory pieces. Gross.

"You can keep on going. Come on."

Lana just lay against the metal listening. Her hand had opened up again. She had that look on her face like Henry got when it started to storm. Mom and Dad hadn't ever noticed, but Jimmy did. He'd try to comfort him any way he could. It lost him some of his best comics.  
Maybe that was what he was supposed to do. He could be the clown for Lana.

"This is…cool. I saw this in Sky High. A long time ago. There was this evil, hot cheerleader who could make herself a bunch of doubles…"

She started crawling again.

It wasn't until at least twenty minutes later that Jimmy's voice wavered. The sounds out there started to change. A voice screamed and it was the most horrible thing Jimmy had ever heard, like something had taken it and amplified, slowed it. Made it less than human.

People didn't shout any more. Beams kept breaking with an alarming rate. Something heavy was moving under them. There was screaming, so much screaming reverberating and bouncing off the walls like it couldn't ever end.

"That's what he was capable of." Lana whispered. Jimmy didn't understand what she meant. She crawled forward the last few steps, let out a shuddering breath and screwed her eyes shut tight.  
"I hope David found her. Oh, I hope he did."

"She probably saved our lives." Chloe might have, from all this- whatever it was. Jimmy drew himself in tighter, thinking of one of those monster flicks. Monsters didn't exist. Of course.

"She saved both our lives by shooting. They would have torn us apart otherwise." Lana went on.

(Something howled, but it wasn't a howl, really, but like beams breaking, hundreds of knives hitting a thick sheet of glass. Was that what being torn apart sounded like?)

"That sucks. I'm no good at formal apologies." Jimmy said.

Right below them, there was a wet, swishing sound as something-someone hit the ground. They didn't move, barely breathed for five minutes, but the vent never opened, no one and nothing came. Something else broke.  
Jimmy heard Lana's manicured nails scraping against the metal.

Maybe it wasn't the least interested in them. It was like World War Three out there.  
They had to block it out somehow.

"Do you want to hear about Catwoman?"

"I don't care. Just. Just talk to me. "

* * *

By the time Chloe walked into what (had been) Metropolis General, it was blacker than an eclipse. The dulled emergency lights couldn't penetrate the ash. She felt her way past a few signs, an exit, out of lights and covered with soot halfway across the road. From there it was easy- a straight beeline into what was left of the hospital.

Something thick caught at her ankle and threw her forward into some half burned wreckage. Her face slid against the glass pane before she could ease away. This had been the phone booth.

On the other side of the glass there was a thick, limp hand, nails all covered in crusty blood. Someone from the mob? His fingers still clutched a baseball bat. Chloe didn't have to look twice to know that whoever-he-was was dead. There was little left to identify. Smoke had probably killed him before he got very close. But the glass was unbroken; and fire hadn't torn off his face like that.

Chloe eased herself away; semi-stumbled on her way, nerves on edge. She's started to learn how natural-or unnatural disasters brought out the worst in people. She just had to get in, find Davis, get out. Lock several bolts behind them.  
If she even could.

There was a remnant of heat in the air. Part of this place had burned. The streets were quiet like there was no one else to try to get close. There wasn't even insulation left. She bit down on her lip. She'd never heard of a meteor mutation that let someone survive being burned alive.  
Her eyes watered as she turned over body after body-thinking of tenth grade and the hundreds of corpses in Pompeii. What if he was next?

Davis had fallen like something had thrown him aside, but he wasn't burned like the others. He was naked, huddled in fetal position next to a few crumpled canisters. He wasn't under a pile of rubble. That was something, right?

She could see the dark lines in his sides, a beautiful muscled abdomen, not like she had seen all that many in her life. Clark never'd volunteered. But this was different, strangely sad vulnerability. Pale skin, he'd never looked this pale in the hospital. There was blood everywhere. She could smell it under the smoke.

Chloe felt for a pulse, the way she'd seen him do, fingers somehow tracing their ways to his cheek. Her fingers tingled with a ghost of roughness. His face was cold.

It was reflex, panic, shake him, shake him like she had before. Maybe he hadn't been ripped apart in the same way as all the others…but… There was so much blood.

He would live. She couldn't live with the other alternative and he would come back. He needed to finish this. Some disconnected part of her wondered when she'd started trust him more than Clark. Or what he needed to finish. Saving people? Just her?

She was going to stay here until the miracle. Chloe settled ahead of him and the canister, wrapped her skirt around her knees. Cocked the gun and aimed into the empty darkness. It was an hour on the clock.

Chloe didn't let go, drew careful circles on his cheek as now alarms blared and the city was blanketed by death. She had to keep herself calm somehow.

When Davis startled up his thoughts were clouded like a nightmare falling through empty space. Sickening and familiar, the taste of blood in the back of his throat. He wasn't alone this time-and he was warm.

Chloe had half clambered into his lap before remembering that those injuries of his probably still itched. The gun was left by the wayside forgotten.

"What are-you doing here?" His voice left his throat in a pained, wondering woosh of air. "I looked for you. You'd found somewhere safe."

"I couldn't stay."  
She clutched to his bare shoulders in the cold, trying to get some warmth back at least until they made their way out. Davis hadn't started to shiver, that was a good sign.

They made their way out, leaning on each other- the girl with the too large gun and the young man with skin red enough to have died several times over. There was no one to see them leave.

Chloe asked him questions, but her voice wasn't like the tenacious reporter's. It was her- weakened with joy and relief. Why was he here? What had he seen? (Who had done this?)

He had only two answers.  
You.  
I don't know.  
His eyes linked with hers and she saw the same fear that those rioters must have had before they died.  
"I don't remember." He whispered.

* * *

"Ready." Lex's eyes were closed against his cheeks and his face was tense.

Clark didn't know what he was doing. It looked pretty easy didn't it? Pushing the electrodes against Lex's head, watching him arch with the shock? It wasn't. It was waking up the past and that hurt. It sure didn't help that he didn't even understand why Lex chose to help him. What he even felt about what he was. His secret. The whole truth.

How do you think I was going to react, Clark? Did you expect a thank you? Congratulations? A little awe?  
Then. I'll do it.

(Clark didn't have the time to get scared. Think, oh this is another mask Lex wears; he's going to lock me up.)  
So here they were. The tank had no one to man it but himself. Emotional choices had never been Clark's strong suit. He was lost with a computer program that wasn't Jor El's database, to explain it all step by step.

Lex was hard and dark and ruthless- probably wouldn't have had that many reservations about doing this himself. But strapped into wires, he looked so breakable.

It made Clark think of what it felt like to be covered in green kryptonite and submerged in the tank. Lex would have done anything to protect him, had done anything to get Lionel off his back once upon a time. Lex's mind had nearly been destroyed by something like this before. And he was putting him in all over.  
Clark's hand quivered over the lever.

He even wasn't sure if this would reverse the process and bring out Zod's memories. With Chloe's suggestion, some friend of Lex's called Hamilton. It was the only thing that could give them a fighting chance. Was it worth it?

In the end it was Lex. Lex, of the constant questions and fragile fingers that never were weak. Lex.  
His Lex who pulled the lever.

* * *

By the time they had picked their way back to apartment complex, thankfully not too obviously looted, that scared expression of Davis's hadn't faded away. Chloe should have been grateful that he wasn't up to deep thought. As it was, she didn't get the chance to take him room to room, blush while pointing out 'shower' and 'bathroom' and watch his mouth fall open when she told him there was just one bed and she wanted him to stay there. Instead, all her energies were focused on getting into her bedroom and clearing the bed of text books before he collapsed.

She tugged on his hand until he stumbled with her into the lumpy twin she studied for finals in. He leaned against the wall an awkward angle and barely straightened up until she pulled him to her. This regeneration, whatever he did, took too much out of him. He wasn't going to hold a vigil to keep her safe, hopefully. He needed to heal.

"It's safe to rest now." She whispered. Two locks and a security bolt. She didn't know if the precaution was even necessary. She thought the people had left the building a long time ago. "For once, I'll let a guy take the bed."

"Don't know where I'd be without you." he said, so low she could've blinked and missed it.

"For the record, I'm glad you're out of 'the Bodysnatchers', too."

Her hand looped around his shoulder where she sat cross legged in the bed, ash and blood scar-like on her knees. He didn't seem to have much energy to get himself more comfortable than that. She could stay here all night. His head was a weight against her chest. She swallowed back quickness in her breath at the intimacy. The rightness of it.

He wasn't peering down at her bust, though. He'd caught a glimpse of some of the congealing blood on her second good pair of white sheets.

"Davis, it's no problem. Bleeding happens. I wish I could've brought you with me sooner. "(He didn't probably. He'd been loading as many stretchers as he could, until the last moment. She wondered what had happened to those people.)

"This wasn't the first time, Chloe." His lashes were cracked open and for the very first time she realized how long they were.

"What do you mean?"

The blood.  
"I had…blackouts sometimes. When I woke up..."

"-you were covered in it."

"Something with super strength killed the mob."

She knew the words he wasn't saying. Just because he was capable of it didn't mean he was.  
He could have bled that all on his own.

"You're staying here, Davis. "

"I need to find out."

He started to struggle to sit up, just a little, which for him should have been potential risky to her life and limb. But she knew deep down he didn't want to win this.

"I don't want you drag you into all this…if..."

She held tighter.  
"You're still scared and paranoid. You lost blood. I'm not at my best, now, either. Just get some sleep. Okay? Research tomorrow."

He nodded into her shoulder, okay, and she thought her heartbeat calmed him.  
She reached out to close his eyes with her hand and thought better of it, drew the rest of the sheets around him.

Fifteen minutes later, Davis had fallen asleep in her lap. Chloe leaned back awkwardly, nails making slow patterns back and forth in the back of his hair. His fingers had curled around her arm like he was little boy who didn't want to let go.

* * *

Clark hadn't walked one step away. He'd stayed there trapped in the spell of the static and Lex stiff in the chair. His x-ray vision could catch Lex's eyes moving back and forth under his lids. Just like REM sleep.

When Lex woke up it was as if he hadn't slept at all.

"Lex?" Clark asked, fingers closing around the metal that held Lex in place. Lex pushed himself up and out. Clark must have twisted the bars apart without noticing. Lex wasn't looking at them or Clark's hands. He didn't move for a very long time.

Elbows on his knees, eyes open; he stared at nothing and saw it all. He knew everything.

Lex didn't ask how do I live with it now? He had stopped asking him that sort of question. Clark wanted, then contrarily, to draw him close, to ask the questions that he would never answer.

Tell yourself he'll be the death of you. That always works.  
Lex wouldn't be able to handle the truth. He'd lost part of his identity in that shower. He'd crack too.

This was all Clark asked.  
"So what weapon were you-Zod looking for?" Did he have it already, was it too late?

Lex lifted his gaze.  
"Not what, Clark. Who."

* * *

At nine am sharp, the battery powered coffee pot started to whistle. For once, Chloe was glad to be an impoverished college student too poor to buy a proper one. Hot water!  
Water. Damn it.

Davis was in her shower, and she tried not to let her mind wander to the fact that he was naked, or how he'd felt like he'd wanted to be with her, or his hands. She looked longingly at the door, currently without a lock, sighed. She had the worst timing for things like this. Always.

Chloe blew into the steam of her cup as she watched a little of the hastily shot news broadcast with the volume on low. The way the clip was shot looked liked the Blair Witch Project, while the window behind the reporter-in-studio was broken.

"Police and emergency crews were greeted by a gruesome scene at Metropolis General Hospital today…"

It would have looked like fiction, had she not seen it with her own eyes before in the dark. Lit up, it looked that much worse. News images didn't censor any of it clawed bodies, mushes of flesh and bone. She'd have to burn those clothes of hers.

While the nervous reporter declared that there were 'animal attacks of unprecedented concentration and ferocity' and advised everyone to stay behind safely closed doors, Chloe thought about what Davis said.

Blackouts could have meant low blood sugar as readily as…whatever he thought they did. She'd had enough experience with meteor rock infections to know that those powers were one of the first steps on the crazy train. She wasn't willfully blind. There was a large margin of risk.

When he babbled it out, it had all been between the lines. He thought he was the killer. She wouldn't, ever. She wasn't being willfully blind. She'd just never been so sure of anyone like she'd been of Davis.

The news footage was starting to loop, no commercials, it was bad. "Struggling Metropolis another thing to fear on its streets…"  
Chloe took the remote and shut off the TV.

She turned to see Davis, dressed in just sweats, wet, with that look on his face. Super-hearing. Oh damn it.

(She couldn't convince him that he had gotten the blood all over him in a perfectly innocent way.)

"It's not as if I went to save people as a naked paramedic, Chloe." He walked back to her as if he wasn't supposed to be there.

"You're not a killer." She knew Davis but the lack of memories wasn't so easily explained by a knock on the head. He looked so horrified and broken that Chloe wished she'd studied more forensics in high school.

"You don't believe it could be me, do you?" (They'd known each other for just three days.)

"Get it through your head. You save people."  
She looked down at his hands (so tense) and tried to think of something else to say that wouldn't sound completely pathetic.

Lacking that, she reached out to be lifted; felt his breath unnaturally warm on her neck, felt the coolness of his eyelashes close against her skin. He didn't kiss her. Was she going to be hyperaware of him all of her life?

"Do something for me." She whispered.

She walked away from Davis, towards the bed, past it, shoving the closet door open. Her fingers fumbled across some old sweatshirt she'd found of Clark's when she was repacking stuff. He'd probably forgotten she'd had it.

The best thing about unrequited crushes was getting caught out the literal cold. 7th grade. Clark had draped her in it, still warm from his body and she'd looked ridiculous but she'd near about had an orgasm anyway. Back when she'd-*that*-with Jimmy (and not had one), drunk out of her mind, he'd asked her why a hot chick was wearing such an ugly shirt.

It had long since been washed clean of Clark's scent, and she'd stopped wearing it, but it was a comfort thing.

Davis looked at her, at the closet and she kept thinking of her little epiphany in one of them.

"Ready to take a field trip?" Chloe asked. If she couldn't put his mind at ease, at least she could try and make him remember who he was.

* * *

Clark and Lex ended up taking one of Luthorcorp's fuel efficient jets to Washington. Sure Clark could have ripped open the five walls of the Pentagon if he wanted to, without effort at all. But he had sounded so young, confiding, "I can't actually fly."

Now Clark had apparently started thinking of what he could do with all this classified knowledge and stared at him closedly over the seat. So afraid of being weak. Was this uncomfortable? It wasn't at Lionel levels and frankly Lex was tried of seeing all of the apocalyptical mess, in full 3d definition to go along with the radio broadcasts.

'He'd' killed about fifty people because they were in his way. Lit the walls on fire and watched them scream, a few stuffed shirt bureaucrats under ruins of rubble. That was a change from one. But the pure hateful joy of it was much stronger in these new memories. The actions had a clear, concise purpose. They contained more logic, perhaps than his; it wasn't Clark, Clark, Clark.

Control. Just what he'd wanted and it didn't look beautiful.  
The sight of it all inside Lex's lids just wouldn't go away. Nor did the knowledge, that in some parallel world it would have been him.

"That bad, then?" Clark's eyes wandered to his throat for on any sound and gave a murmur of dissatisfaction.  
Lex wondered when Clark had started expecting him to answer.

There was very little else listen to. Radio broadcasters constructed conspiracy theories and televangelists babbled on about the wrath of God. Around them, Metropolis had undergone a crumbling collapse; first the people, then the infrastructure. Mobs murdered each other in streets and the good Samaritans were lucky if the people they helped didn't slit their throats for the supplies they were about to hand out to others.

Lex didn't really think of what was waiting them in there. Braniac- Kryptnn's most comprehensive database, some kind of horror story. And Krypton's living weapon too, if Braniac been successful. Just to level the world. Going into the danger wasn't making the ultimate sacrifice. It was just trying to blot the rest out. This was getting habitual.

It was not until the serial killer business that Clark was tense enough to break his silence. Lex assumed he wasn't gifted with being in two places at once.

"Have you ever wondered how many of these people we run into every day that take advantage of situations like this?" Killers in their midst, that was what Clark meant to say. "Why doesn't anyone stop them?"

"Human nature is lousy, Clark. You never can count on just it to see you through. You always need a Plan B."  
Clark didn't remind him of all the 'Plan Bs' in his past and how they'd been a series of excuses.

"I've never pulled someone into action like this. I don't know if I can handle it."

"If you had a choice between me and ending all this, you'd choose ending it. I would. "  
Clark turned to the same unknown destination out the window he'd memorized, flopping his hair over his eyes.

"I would expect you to be a little more positive." Clark whispered, voice toned down. What about their little talk had been positive?

"Truth is I don't know what to say. Would you like a Sun Tzu line?"

"Lex… Braniac's as much of a killer as Zod. Just in case we don't get back. We should get everything we need to off our chests now. Maybe, some things I did…ended up affecting your life in negative ways. Despite everything, I still consider you my friend."  
It was costing Clark to say that much. "I'm not strong enough to stop this without you. I know you never show it…but I wish I could make this right somehow." He wanted him to forget the memories.

Lex at least could make an effort.  
"You don't have to worry about blaming yourself for permanently shattering my psyche. The first time the shock therapy was worse. Thanks for coming back for me then, even if I scared you off."  
The rest was twisted, complex- things he doubted Clark would hear now. Phelan-his first kill. Things Clark's never would hear. Let him remember him as the friend in need.

"Sometimes I think I almost know you."  
Clark reached out his hands, large tapered fingers and dry palms and took hold of his. There was warmth, the kind you gave to someone whom you'd just befriended. Lex remembered this smile; the pure smile was divided from his eyes. He was so innocent yet.

"About your faith in humanity…" Clark whispered. "Good people don't leave people they care about behind." Another one of Jonathan Kent's famous sayings?

Lex clamped his mouth shut, turned away and never caught Clark's look.

(Clark had a brief, glancing; completely crazy thought maybe he was not yet a Kryptonian. Not even a decent human being.) Lex missed the words he never said. I'm sorry. Shouldn't have given up on you.

Clark let go and Lex watched the clouds part for the buildings, five-sided walls glowing with sickly green light.  
If they didn't, then it just had to be just him they left.

* * *

If Davis thought Chloe was taking him back to the scene of the crime he was sadly mistaken. It was actually more juvenile than all that. The Screaming Byron Theatre. Bowie maniacs, who knew? It was damp and huge, abandoned enough that he felt completely protected from the world out there and afraid of what he could do all at once.

Davis was temporarily distracted from the train of thought, when after jimmying open one of the doors, Chloe bolted the locks. All four of them. She flicked two of the switches, but it wasn't enough light at least for her to see very well by.  
Davis was cursed with the vision to see the gentle sway of her hips, the purposeful steps she took, drawing attention to the smooth curves of her calves. He was different and dangerous to-everyone, but hormones were universal anyway.

Davis followed as she picked her way across theatre seats, caught her arm before she and the water bottles in her hand went sprawling. She was a warm weight against his chest and he felt like a kid gone truant from school for the seconds it took her to right herself and smile with a mumbled thank you.

(He didn't know exactly what they were doing. Especially now. He'd never done this. They were locked up together behind solid stone walls. Nothing between her and another of his blackouts.)

She'd been the first person to ask him to do this. And the first one. Ever.

"What is this place?"

"Safe. My dad used to tell me to come here in case of an earthquake. This place was built in 1867 with foundations solid enough to withstand bombing"

Davis settled himself in the seat next to her, careful not to grip anything tight like before. Gabe had never said anything about what he was.

"This is beautiful." He said.

Chloe nodded, crossed her hands over her lap, too long sleeves of her sweater nearly dropping off her.

"I used to come here to brood. Nothing seems quite so terrible when you can get away from it all." Her eyes glowed with optimism in the half-light and Davis wondered at what made her brighter than anything else.

"So." She whispered. "We can imagine there's a movie on. And talk. If you want."

There wasn't that much about him Chloe didn't know.  
I don't know what I am. I need you close too much. That scares me and you too.

"This isn't safe for you."

"It's the best way now. I want to help you, Davis." Chloe knew him but she didn't know his past. That's what she needed to understand.

What usually came out of Davis's mouth was a detailed list of the homes he remembered, McBride and Forester--a chronology. There was a point he got to where he just didn't know.

Instead he told her the truth.  
All of a sudden he'd just been. At eight years old-he'd woken up in with social workers around him, barefooted, dressed in a hospital gown, a smudge of blood over his eye. They'd whispered words like memory loss and trauma, as if he was too fragile to understand.

"I don't know the beginning. Where am I supposed to start?"

She pursed her lips, already digesting those little bits of information in her fact bank. Still didn't know what that meant to him.  
"Tell me about the first time you felt safe."

This was one of his best-kept secrets. More private than the blackouts had been

"I ran away from the homes I was sent to about four times." There had been the beatings or the indifference and the indifference was always worse. "The first time-- she found me in an old building I had been running with-"

"A gang." Chloe filled in before he could ask her how she knew. "The way you picked the gun up. You held it like a knife."

He looked at her, just a brief nod of his head. Someone had listened to him, believed in him. Her eyes reminded him, just for a moment.

"I needed to do something to be initiated. The guys would tie you up, hands behind your back 24 hours, rough you up for a while, leave you in an abandoned warehouse or something. Watch you. If you were alive twenty-four hours later you were strong enough. I--I didn't take it too well." So badly, they'd thought he was dead after four hours and left.

Inside the four glowing stone walls Davis hadn't been able to breathe. He hadn't pounded on the rock or even moved. And the woman had come for him somehow. Lifted him up, taken him to a hospital as her dying son covered in burns and green tinged rubble.

"She saved me."

The woman had pushed and pleaded and that must have done something. Davis lived, though now he understood why. She'd taken him back to a tiny sparse apartment, to her real son, comatose with tubes stuck all inside him. They sat on the couch and she'd asked him all about himself.

Only weeks later, when the money had too low for food had she taken him back to a Catholic home. Am I going to miss you, Davey. She'd put a Bible in his hands, all covered over in brown paper, one of the only things she'd owned. He'd stayed by the window for weeks after she left, hoping.  
He'd never heard from her again, but always looked. They'd told him she was a bad woman and he never believed it.

"I wasn't supposed to feel safe, but I did."

"Yeah." Chloe smiled, looking down in distraction. "I know that." There was some realization in her face, and whatever he wanted it to be, it wasn't just emotion.

"What is it?"

"This talk is familiar." She closed her eyes, breathed out. "I think I might have a start. You have to really go back to what you saw, Davis."

She pressed cool fingers into his shoulder until he had to as well. "Do you remember anything in particular about the warehouse? Anything at all that was unusual?"

"I could have almost sworn the rocks looked—green."

Chloe stared at him for the longest time.

"And it felt like your skin was being flayed off."  
Chloe knew that much from Clark. Knew he would just lie there limp like an insensible mass whenever Kryptonite touched his skin. Firsthand knowledge. Could it be possible he had a…brother, of sorts?

"Yes."

Davis had been in Kansas. He could have come down in the shower.

She licked her lips, suddenly dry without the water. "The meteor shower. It explains why you have more than one ability and the weakness to the green rocks. They're called Kryptonite rocks here in Kansas-from your-home. You're not meteor infected. If we don't get anything else, we can start there."

Chloe had never said flat out that he was an alien.  
Davis waited for the shock, but it never bowled him over. It felt like it had been coming for a very long time. She knew about him and it didn't seem the sort of thing that needed to be run screaming from, at least this very moment.

"You know that for sure?"

"You're not the first one I've met. There's someone who can help more than me."  
She was smiling in the dark. It was just a little too soon to say how she knew. Davis didn't want to tear her past wide open. He wasn't the first thing in her life.

Chloe started by defining every single thing she knew about the shower. After an hour, her words started to slow a little at the ends. She had stayed up all night with him.

"So then Class U meteor freaks. They're the ones… that… are… exposed. To the rocks. They lose their minds, more often than not." Davis was conscious that Chloe's head was a breath from his shoulder. The pressure of it was light, and she wasn't asleep.

In the empty theater the barely hesitant, 'that's me, I think', echoed. Charlie had wanted her heart, beating and Kryptonite laced. Like her mother's heart.

"I'm a freak, too."

"If anyone can push out of that swinging -it's going to be you."

Chloe laughed a little. "I'm just lucky to see the crazy train coming. Dad didn't. It was hard on him."

Davis hadn't heard a word about dad before, other than Chloe's rushed cell call to 'Gabe' before the phone lines cut out. She hadn't said much then other than 'He's making it'.  
Maybe her father had closed himself off after mother 'left' and Chloe had started to think of herself having to be alone in the world. All grown up and self-sufficient like she was now.

"I kind of wish I could call him now." She whispered, eyes liquid flickers in the light.  
Everything about her voice said she didn't want to talk about it. Everything about her voice said she needed him to say something.

"You won't deal with it alone. I'll be here, every step of the way."  
Here he was, just an hour after being convinced that he was the darkest thing on earth. Not that being sane was something he could even count on for himself. "We'll learn."

It felt like one of those moments of silence- anticipation of loss, a second later Chloe was twisting her gaze down, wiping the back of a hand across her face.

"Sure we will." She batted the problem all away. Just like that. Now to another manner of business. "You might be surprised, but we didn't come up here tonight to research you. I made the decision a while back."

She fumbled in her lap, fingers sliding under that infuriating sweater, that pale gold skin of hers peeking out from underneath her top as her hands tugged. Davis almost looked away, stuttered something perfectly true to kneeling at church and confessing impure thoughts.

He then noticed Chloe's hands, holding out a pack of leathery meat. That was the surprise.

"Beef jerky." She said. The smile had just reached her eyes, amusement peeking through where she'd caught onto his reaction. "I'm not letting you run yourself down, you know."

He tugged some from the bag in acquiescence, raising his eyebrow. That made her happy. Made her feel normal and like they were two kids playing hooky again.

By nature, the jerky was messy and noisy and no one could eat it delicately. She was sucking on each of her fingers when she ate, in silent question 'how is yours?' He remembered her taste, remembered the feeling, exquisite and terrible and real all at once. Davis thought for the first time, that maybe this had been a very bad idea.

Chloe just barely flushed at the fact that his gaze hadn't shifted. White teeth bit into soft lips. "I'm too hungry to be picky." She explained.

"You must be used to the taste by now, right?"

"I grew up on macaroni, actually." He murmured, only once glancing down to the watch in his pocket, knowing the hour came steadily nearer.

She didn't say much more, drawn back into her thoughts, at least until….

"Do you think we can stay here? Just us?" she asked him.

Temporarily robbed of voice, Davis nodded. At eleven, a little before then, he'd tell her to lock the door between them.

Apparently satisfied with his non-answer, Chloe reached a hand out across the empty seat rest, sticky with salt. Before she slept for real she held onto his and, half in his lap she smoothed her hand back and forth. She hadn't missed that glance at all.

* * *

**Next up:** Things get a LOT heated. And shiit starts to hit the fan. As in. Lex and Clark passively -aggressively flirt, Chloe and Davis tackle what could be happening and parent and freak issues together, Clark and Lex confront Braniac, Chloe and Davis ...do i really have to specify? it's ME!, Braniac turns on his Ultimate Superweapon- which aptly happens to be-Davis.

Comments =luv, just what a poor college student needs!


	4. part four

_Next part up! Thank you so much for your encouraging comments! They really picked up my day!_

_Also: **M** rating for this, beforehand._

* * *

The jet was hastily landed more than a thousand yards closer to the Pentagon than the safety regulations had allowed.

The Pentagon itself had started to crumble That's what it looked like at least, to Clark. Just what the farm would have been like if he had started manifesting powers a little earlier.

It looked as if someone with his same powers was just playing around. Braniac's games resulted in a few more thousand lost lives every time. And Clark never could see the pieces.

He started to feel the Kryptonite after a few more steps in.

"You have to stay behind." He told Lex, grimacing. Braniac wouldn't care about humans in the crossfire, even former vessels of Zod.

Lex didn't have any of Zod's abilities now. He just had the memories to let Clark know he had to disable the power grid that seemed to be sapping all of Earth's energy systems.

"Somehow that sounds like a terrible battle strategy. I didn't come to play the maiden in distress."

"Look-I'm not that naïve. I've done this before."

A few more steps in and Clark folded, dark veins worming across his face. Lex knelt and Clark stiffened on reflex.

"You survived for years this way?" Lex whispered-slowly-intimately so it didn't seem quite like an insult...more like…

"If you are weakened-how are you going to get in without getting caught?"

"I'll disable the grid." Clark pushed out. "You'll stay here- alive."

"Let me think about that. No."

"I'm going to protect you, Lex. You won't ever feel violated like this again."

"You would really do all this for me?"

Lex's eyes stopped Clark. Heated and awed and so intense. Clark flinched at the touch ghosting over his cheek, stepped forward, thought no no this was not him, this was not everything he wanted. Dammit now was not…

"How else can you protect me Clark? You can't tell me you are going to make me forget when this is over."  
Heated. Intense. Dark.

Clark didn't quite-trust Lex yet- it was true-but that didn't mean he automatically looked for the star blade in his pocket. But now cutting off all his air-the blade was unmistakable.

The safe feeling in his gut plummeted.

"What are you doing?"

Lex would be the death of him, sooner rather than later. And he was looking more crazed by the second.

"Professor Fine, I've got your boy!"

* * *

It was time to go.  
Davis's wristwatch had survived long enough to tell him that. The leather had been shredded by something sharp and brutal (from the inside, close to his skin) but the dials worked just fine. The digits signaled eleven pm, in stark contrast to their dark little hideaway from the world.

Chloe's hair brushed his fingers. She nuzzled closer to the warmth, though, half pressed into his lap.  
"Wake up." He whispered.

She pulled away too slowly to be startled awake. It was just about the time the attacks had started happening. Chloe had to know that too.

"I've got to leave now."

"Davis. No."

She did jump up when he started to go to open the door himself. He just needed her to lock the door behind him, all three locks from the inside. That was more than she would do. She stood in his way fisting her hand in the arm of the sweatshirt.

It was stupid to go into certain death because of a whim, she reasoned.

It wasn't a whim that filled his mind of images of her blood staining his hands, pale skin and red, and the warm scent of blood as a gnarled thing went through her. She didn't even blink; put her hand on the third lock.

"No. I don't care how twisted you make it sound. You can't give me a reason to let you do this. It doesn't even make sense."

Explain.  
There were the attacks he was sure he was deep in, the blank moments and the blood. The onset of fear came first. What would it take to get her to understand she was in danger?

"I just know. I can feel it before it happens. I do now. I'm scared for you."

"Funny, I think that's my job." She said.

The locks were all in place again. Davis had to start over. He never got the door open. Physically, Chloe never tried to stop him.

"I'll follow you. I'll go right back to met Gen. Set myself up as the next sacrifice to whatever psycho really is out there. Or we can do this together, here, where the potential for either of us getting torn into shreds is exponentially less."

Her eyes didn't waver; and he couldn't breathe because she meant it. What drove people to those choices, the unknown, darkness, certain death? Why?

A jagged, snug blanket of nothingness was waiting for him. Yet, she said, it could be dozens of things-the stresses of newly developing abilities. She made it sound so reasonable. Maybe it was in his head.

"I can still feel it." Davis said.

"So can I. Trust me." The please might have broken his certainty. He just needed this for a little while.

"Do I have a choice?" He asked.

"Nope. I'm going to prove I know what you are. I win. You lose. Really simple." Chloe caressed his cheek, very briefly and out of tune with her words.

She stared until Davis sat down, hesitantly. Eyes on the closed door. Some part of him wondered if he loved or hated her for this choice.

"First you need to tell me exactly what the blackouts feel like."

The blackouts felt like exactly nothing to Davis once they really came on. The blackouts-maybe- were like some out of body experience. He didn't know. It was before the blackouts that he started to feel it.

"My senses start dampening first. I feel giddy-"

"That could also come from really, really low blood sugar." Chloe pushed her mouth into a half-smile. "I don't have chocolate."

It should have made it better. When he braced his hand on the armrest she jumped at the metal crumpling. Like that.

"It's not too late to tell me to go." She didn't have to.

"Davis, stop looking like that. It's not my funeral. Is it really that unbelievable that I trust you?"

Yes. Yes it was. She knew the odds.

The darkness wasn't friendly now and more than anything he was afraid that he wouldn't hold out against whatever it hid. If she didn't make it he wouldn't be able to forgive either of them. Why him? Why?

Chloe turned toward him, as if she was going to say something serious before thinking better of it.

He still didn't know the answer when she leaned over and kissed him, lips dry, breath nervous. She wasn't just half into his lap now, held onto his hand, moved it over where the muscles of her knee tensed and relaxed. Skin.

He didn't try to pull away as it went on, had to close his fist to keep from going for more. He barely had the presence of mind to notice when his mouth opened against hers-shaky and exuberant, un-graceful as if this was completely new. She made a soft, satisfied noise in her throat. He pulled her close so her weight pressed in on him, because something about it seemed to speak to his new senses more than any other perception. Just for now. If it was the end of everything it wouldn't be so bad to let go.

Chloe pulled back so quickly he had to convince himself it wasn't something that he had dreamed up. Her mouth was red though, and she had to clear her throat.

"I'm telling you, you know how control your strength." She smoothed her skirt back over her knees, back in her seat.

There was a choking sound-but that couldn't have been him. He felt like someone had lit a match under him and left it burning. At least, he hadn't torn the seat to pieces. She had the chance to pull away.

"It's not much different from controlling what you do when you think you're blacking out."

Chloe was not quite, like most women he'd ever seen, with hair that never got mussed and who never stopped to think. She weighed everything out-he knew that look on her face, the way she chewed on her lip, the way her eyes lit up in anticipation of victory.

Chloe wasn't flirting now, but showing him just what he'd done, or the physical equivalent. Davis screwed his eyes shut tight before another vaguely threatening sound came out of him.

"I know you won't hurt me." She whispered. "So there is no point in closing yourself off. Is there?"

It was more than just this moment. The big picture, a lifetime's worth of unspoken words.

"I don't know why or how you believe in me. But…I...I need it."

Davis didn't understand the hows or whys. It made no sense, because even now those nightmares of blood were supposed to block out her face- the deceptive fantasy that maybe things could go alright just- this time. Being near her had created an addiction that he didn't know how to break if he tried. He wouldn't.

"I want that."  
He thought maybe-that was what he was looking for all this time. He loved her.

"What did you say?"

"I –lo—"

"Wow. That's quite an insider to spring on a girl."

His hand had gotten under hers, on her knee and he didn't remember putting it there.

"It's okay." she said. "You're a great guy, you know that? The truth is-I just don't know how to say this."

Chloe kept looking down at her lap instead of the blacked out screen or him when she talked. She'd always looked at him. Just the same way the social workers told you that you had to be moved on. You were just not a good fit for that particular home at that particular time.

She wanted someone to be there. She wanted friendship.

Davis felt like the bottom had been blown out of his world. For so long his world had been simply what he wanted to become. It had changed. All of it.

Chloe blew out a breath. "I rehearsed this when you were asleep."

"I understand." But it didn't stop hurting any less. Didn't keep the blackness from squeezing at him so he wanted to curl around himself. The emotions always made it more volatile somehow. He wouldn't ever be a danger to her.

It was a reflex, a life's worth of experience that told him this was the point it all changed. He had to be awake for this. Davis was ready to swallow it._ I just really like being able to help you, Davis. It's just something I do._

* * *

Clark had harbored fears about being in Lex's control shortly after their friendship had even begun. Lying helpless at Braniac's feet did little to correct that assumption.

Braniac still looked like he had as Professor Fine. Maybe a little more run down, but the sharper cheekbones lent him an additional air of menace.

Clark couldn't run, he couldn't move, he couldn't ask for Lex's help, he couldn't try to fight back… This exceeded his everyday run-of-the-mill 'Lex betrayed me' nightmares. He felt angry enough to destroy something. 'Stupid, stupid-Dad was looking out for you; you always trust the wrong ones' but mostly Clark felt like a piece of meat.

Around him, the computers emitted metallic shrieks, the screens showing ten percent- eleven percent…Braniac was starting it. Clark shut his eyes- and knew that these screens showed him the endgame-this was the weapon. The thing they had to stop.

"I need information." Braniac explained in his curious monotone.

"Take it." Lex was saying. "I just want my-LIFE-back. I want you to stop sapping Washington D.C. and Metropolis. I want you to take him and go fulfill your mission in whatever hole you came from or I'll kill him."

"I don't care so much for that one."

"Of course you do. He has the information you need; now that thing in me is gone. He was more than willing to hold me up as a sacrifice for this world. I can do the same."

When Braniac chuckled, Clark could hear it across the room, enough to make his hair stand on end. He was walking right up to Lex.

"Why shouldn't I take your little piece, too?"

Lex didn't back up. "Why do you think I don't know what it takes to stop you?"  
He had made his first stupid move.

"Oh? I didn't." Again- Braniac said- in that curious, detached-amused voice. His skin was starting to glow- currents of yellow, green coding shone over 'human' skin. Clark could see that much with what he could still use of his vision.

"We'll see just what you are." Braniac's fingertips were starting to morph into a computer-like probe.

Lex just-stood there. Didn't try to run. Nothing.  
Clark couldn't get up under his own power, but somehow yelling 'no' was a reflex. "I don't care how much you might hate me. No! Coward!"

With his Kryptonite sensitized skin, it nearly broke Clark when Lex delivered one solid, booted kick to his ribs. It sent him skidding across the floor, split his eyebrow on a torn hunk of rock wall. This wasn't Lex at all.

Through watering eyes, Clark saw the dials of the power grid glowing ahead of him. He'd gotten too close for it to be a coincidence. He felt ridiculously light, like he was about to throw up any second.

Lex had been his friend. Lex was still? His friend.

This was Lex's plan, and if he'd gotten them this far, the most Clark could do was muster through the pain and take the grid out.

It took a couple of tries to even flick at the metal. Clark rose, staggered, collapsed over the grid and that almost did it.  
The green lights inside the Pentagon disappeared entirely. There was still enough light for Clark to see the blood dripping from his lips.  
Clark thought maybe he saw Lex breathe a sigh of relief. That's all he did.

Braniac hadn't panicked at all. Oh hell.  
'It's begun.' was all that Braniac said.

Fine's body was glowing. Clark pushed himself off of the machine-past another green panel of Kryptonite. His feet were heavy-had he ever been strong on his own? He fell just eight feet from them. Impotent.

Lex was rooted in place-eyes shut-the same sickly light glowing in his skin. He wasn't even aware. Metal from Fine's fingertips reached out to Lex, pushing against his skull like electrodes. Whatever it was-it was bad. Clark knew it, like he knew- he had to move now. He had to.

Clark didn't know which happened first-Fine barely saw him coming. He crawled the last few steps, but couldn't move past the barrier. He rammed into it. Again. Again. And then the only heartbeat he heard was his. It was not supposed to end like this. Lex was not a fragile thing he loved; he wasn't ever supposed to break. His eyes burned red and heat vision crackled past the barriers onto Fine's robotic arms- into his glowing face.

The light started to dim then and he barreled –clumsily- un-heroically- into a smoking Fine. He took the star blade and that moment he stopped thinking about how many portals into other evil dimensions he could open. (Lex wouldn't even breathe.)

Clark would have stabbed Fine to death, but Fine was already dead.

* * *

It would have been easier to not to look- but it was impossible for Davis to look away from her. Call it self-destructive tendencies. Feelings. There was the 'tackling problems' look again.

"Being afraid of you was never being afraid of what you could do to me, but what you had done already. I was sure I in love with my best friend, and then the adrenaline just faded. I wanted to be free from it, but I never was. I picked you up, and you're not going anywhere."

Chloe looked up then and Davis saw her eyes weren't unreadable at all. This was something more than an impasse or a checkmate. Not a rejection. There was a chance, more than even odds. She was staying because of something as tremulous as feeling something.

"I'll wait." That was the way it was supposed to be. That was the way he wanted it-to be sure he wasn't going to grab hold of something just to tear it apart. But adrenaline just wasn't like that. Adrenaline made you need.

Davis could see new things, the way her hands relaxed, saw the hidden, small smile of hers that could have lit up the entire theatre. This was right and it wasn't and this was completely crazy. But when she climbed into his lap, straddling the seat, he just held her there. Waited for her to say something sensible, to redefine his world again.

Chloe said that the door was locked. Just in case, but it wasn't keeping them apart like it should've.  
She really didn't have to say all that much more; he had gotten good at rationalizing. The fear of her changing her mind hadn't quite left him yet, the remnants of adrenaline coursing through his system. The kiss happened quickly enough. Her breath lingered, pulling something out of him again. It could have been the darkness in him putting her at risk-but-he wasn't a prisoner of his own body.

She did it again and this was so far from his first experience-a stepsibling asking him, wanna make out? at sixteen. Chloe wasn't playing, going slow like she was afraid of looking desperate. Her sweater still ended up lost in the dark space across the row of theatre seats.

It wasn't that he wanted her so much he had a hard time breathing or that she went careful and still when his mouth grazed her earlobe. He just wanted something more personal, wanted this moment to be nothing but them communicating- no more stuff between them.

Before her, Davis hadn't always thought of things in terms of touch. Sure, there was holding oxygen masks over people's faces with the right kind of pressure… All of his touches hadn't been loaded. Brushes in and out of elevators, handshakes-efficient, but stay out of the way.

It was definitely different. His fingers tingled on her shoulder, sensations were more, and she said he could be careful. The bones slid underneath her skin as she huffed, frustrated, "No Davis, off, first."

It didn't take him long to know it was his clothing she had an issue with. She pulled at the cotton, so hard it almost tore before finally deciding the best idea was to pull it over his head.

"That's better." Her hands smoothed flat over his chest. "You smell like you again."

This was about the time he said something about defining what exactly they wanted out of this. He felt things for her. And she felt warm and soft and far too quiet. She'd just slipped down, out of the seat and his hands scrabbled and found her back. She wasn't hurt, she hadn't lost her balance. What?

He could see the color of her eyes even in the dark when they flickered. He pressed his shoulders into the seat.

"Feeling in your extremities definitely means your nerves are all in working order." She whispered.

Chloe pressed his hand to her mouth, kept it there; and kissing hands was what you just read about. He traced his finger against her upper lip-again engrossed with this feeling- touch and softness and the fact that he could do this and she could smile at him. Chloe licked it. She hadn't missed much of anything that he had been thinking really. Davis felt a bolt of something strong-but not like darkness. He was unable to stop looking at his hand, or the way her lips just tugged, enclosed… He dug his free hand a little deeper into the seat. His throat burned.

"We should talk." Right? You still want to?

"I…really like you. I'm still scared. I really…" She said. "Do you have to be a gentleman, now?"

Davis knew where this was going. He'd, well done it enough to know what went where, but this particular…He'd always been afraid that it would be a little degrading. I'll show you I care by sucking you off. But the treacherous part of him that still hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the fact that this could be real didn't want to hear it. All his skin was prickling, a ghost of pressure. Maybe she'll still respect you when you get out of here.

It could have been a yes.  
"We do need… to talk."

"…And to decode the mystery of Davis Bloome." Chloe nodded, that was the whole point, ends of her hair mussed where his fingers had combed through it, breath brushing him. Almost.

"What do you feel like?"

He knew what happened, and what went where but this was so different. She was actually patting his knee and telling him to relax, but her voice was a little hoarse, for once anything but relaxing. Then her lips touched him and he thought that if he was jumbled before, then what was this?  
_  
It felt like…_  
Davis could see everything in the darkness and that made it that much worst. Her mouth was impossible soft. Stunted, too light in some places, too much pressure in others. Almost a kiss, drawing up closer, enveloping, teasing away, leaving careful trails of fire. It took all his strength to start breathing again. He couldn't stop looking at her, somehow forgetting that teetering on the edge of the complete loss of control was anything but ideal. She was watching him with a cursory curiosity, somehow catching onto his reactions, not so gentle then and he couldn't quite classify this look of hers anymore.

like…  
He closed his hands over something, few strands of her hair, wrapped them around his fingers. He couldn't make himself remember they should have been keeping watch and how could he expect to keep her safe if he didn't even know how to think?  
She seemed to gain a little confidence there, went faster. The build of a terrible kind of suction that seemed to be pulling his thoughts into a maelstrom. For once Davis couldn't hear her heartbeat. There was a wall of sound- thick breaths rushing out of him. He thought maybe he'd never get out. The images in the dark blurred and unfocused on themselves, in anticipation of that coming closer and closer. Her free hand scraped briefly at his back-her mouth closed completely on him. All he knew is that it had to be here, with her, while this meant what she wanted it to.

like…  
There was no embarrassment, just motion and instinct and the way she seemed to know, inexperienced but somehow firm hands. His skin burned and he might have made a sound in his throat moving perfectly on his own now. The air was cool. No point in fighting this now, you're going to feel this for fucking ever.  
Her skin, his skin, and she was with him somehow, however much more he seemed to want. More than this feeling and the warmth and the slow movement of her fingers clenching against his knee. His throat felt thick, around him wasn't a blur anymore-his senses had focused.

Everything was unbearable- the smell of her blood and the more basic human arousal, how stuttering her heart rate was, how easily something would tear through her.  
_It felt like a blackout._

* * *

If Lex wouldn't breathe, Clark's coward speech wouldn't help him now. Somewhere along the line, Clark convinced himself that Lex was breathing again. Braniac hadn't crashed him. Braniac had put himself into Lex. Better or worse?

Clark pushed his hands against his chest with a bare fraction of even human strength and tried to breathe for two. This was how they started after all. When Lex gasped in his next breath he wasn't glowing anymore. Clark clenched the bloody Starblade in his fist, but those weren't Braniac's eyes.

Clark had expected something from him, anyway. "What was that Clark? One kiss before the end of the world?"  
All Lex said was, "You saved my life," in the same wondering way he'd said it once. Then, "Do I know you?"

He felt like he'd lost something.

Clark found himself in a too common position when it came to Lex. He was struck dumb. He couldn't move, and he was going to expel the contents of his stomach in a heartbeat.

Then he told Lex they were friends.

"You need help."  
Braniac had done more than something. Lex's memories were gone. All of them. And the Kryptonite weakened him until Clark felt just about dead.

Blood trailed across the corner of Lex's mouth.  
"I think that's you." he said. "I'm going to get you out. Do you trust me?"

Lex. Once master manipulator, friend. Alive, but compromised. Even if he saw Clark as a stranger, he'd get him out, half dragging, if he had to. He did better than that, had Clark half on his feet before Clark protested. He looked back a moment- to Clark- to the burned corpse and Clark's stomach knotted.

"Check the pockets." He didn't have the strength to scrabble through them himself. It sounded more like someone rummaging garbage than a would-be hero, but it was the only thing they had left to try.

Clark didn't have time to wonder at how Lex didn't empty Fine's pockets as if he was handling checks. He caught a glimpse of the small metal control in his hand before he was out cold.

* * *

Davis had felt the blackouts. Blackouts were the freedom of not knowing. Misty red fueled adrenaline, his body pushed to its limits. His worst nightmare.

Davis was already halfway there. His hand had fisted in her hair before she pulled away. He was panting, incipient orgasm vanishing into panic. He was in control.

Chloe tried to smile, scrubbing her wrist over her mouth, swallowing a breath in before pressing a kiss to his shoulder.  
"I didn't really expect it to work the first time around, anyway."

Davis didn't even think it was safe for them the usual way anyway. He hadn't done anything like this since quite a while before he had acquired his freakish strength.

It took a great deal of care not to fall over and crush her, but he hugged her. He was so tense it must have felt like she was being immobilized.

"I'm sorry. I thought you were dead before… and I just…wanted to...try…"  
She was so quiet he could barely hear her.

He had hurt her. He hadn't wanted to. He always did this-one way or the other- and always dispensing advice- when you find real love hold onto it- made him feel like the biggest hypocrite in the universe.

"It's not you." His voice came out husky. "You make me feel like I can't control anything."

She hadn't been hurt-he hadn't turned into some monstrosity you saw in 'the Mist' -it was okay-so long as- he meant to agree with her.

Chloe was supposed to set their boundaries. He pulled out of the seat, blinking quickly, kneeling on the floor and still towering over her. He wiped at his eyes because they were watering too. Closer.

"That doesn't mean you have to…" She quickly crossed and uncrossed her legs, uneasy, maybe for the first time.

"Davis..."

He laid his hands on her lap, reined in the urge to close them.

"Shh. This is okay. You just have to tell me."

He brushed a large, unsteady hand over the back of her neck (careful now) and pulled her mouth to his again. Closing his eyes wasn't an option now, not if he wanted to do this the right way. She calmed down a little, mouth slick. Her hands rubbed over his shoulders.

"We can't control everything."

It didn't take that much-the harder pressure of her chin into his shoulder, sweat on her forehead, the nuzzle of her mouth, a foreign taste on her lips that somehow he connected with this. He lurched against her and the leg of the seat, the sharpness of her knee digging into his side.

His mouth and hands slid across her hair and into the crook of her neck. Chloe made a faint- high sound- tumbling from the seat onto his lap, over him as he planted his elbows on the carpet and tugged her nearer. She smiled when she said-I get it now, her hair tickling gently at his neck. Her smell-saturated with the coffee she drank so much- paper and ink and living skin, not blood now.

She wriggled closer, and he slid trembling fingers into her hair. The soft press of lips made his mind foggy. She pushed her hands against where his collar would have been, careful pants coming from her throat. There was only the salty tang of the jerky-she didn't taste like blood. His fingers tangled there until she squeaked and batted at his fingers- oh he hadn't eaten enough.

"Sorry."

"Hmmm. Don't think so."

He drew her up to him- lowered himself onto her-he didn't really know. A near-attack was toned down to the muffled thud of her back on the dusty carpet. He wanted it-now-to bury himself in warmth-something pure and real. He wanted something to touch and cut through the shell he felt himself becoming. He wanted to tear her open and understand why she saw him at all. Some of the images going through his head he couldn't even deal with. He didn't want to hurt her. Would he? Third time was the charm, they said.

"I won't hurt you." Anything but reassuring, especially when his hands were locking around her jostling wrists.

He could have thought of this all day-but she had gone from concerned to teasing again. Chloe's eyes shut briefly, then squinted up at him.

"I take it the standard two-minute rule doesn't apply either?" she joked at him. After what they had been doing before it's not as if she was really shocked at all.

"Chloe, there's no two-minute rule."

"But Jimmy said-" Davis growled, not like he even thought about doing it. Not that he was labeling her in terms of 'mate' in his head- it was a feeling.

"Easy, tiger." A warm breath tickled at his neck. "They're in my jacket pocket." Chloe whispered. "That was what I was supposed to tell you, right?"

She wasn't the first girl he knew who carried them, but… she was the first who actually blushed while saying it. Davis bit his lip hard enough to draw blood that never came. Of course, he hadn't counted on Chloe actually touching him while she blushed.  
There was such a breathless, dazed happy look on her face that Davis froze. His fingers were actually trembling. Not like before. Not at all-like before.

"I've given Clark so much advice on this I never thought I'd be going there again or having sex. Or either at the same time. No, you won't fracture my pelvis. When the human- when my body is relaxed, the bones are less easily broken. Like an unconscious person carried by a tornado."

"Somehow, I hope you're not unconscious."

It was a scientific principle, she said, and experience. He wouldn't hurt her, he hadn't hurt her before. Fear lingered like a lead weight in his chest where his human heart would have been. Just another thing he had to lose.

Davis had always thought of this as more romantic somehow-wanted to run his fingers across her throat and learn what it was like to breathe with her. Wanted it to be the first time again.

Sick adrenaline swam through him. There were too many what ifs. He needed to set this right-into something he could believe in. He fell into her, into the sensation of surprisingly callused fingers sliding across the small of his back. If they were breathing, he couldn't hear any of it.

Her head tilted up against his, touch a fraction to rough for human skin. She squirmed. He hadn't undone a belt buckle that wasn't his before.

Chloe kissed him hard and her skin was pebbling with goose bumps. The generator had gone out and now would be a good time, she said.

The conscious part of Davis acknowledged it was much dustier and dirtier here than it had been on the seats. Chloe was small and he was about as fragile as the ton of brick and heavy glass that had trapped him. She was wearing a skirt. If she-well- if she had control it was less risky that she would hit her head on one of the seat legs…

Chloe had a mind of her own as to what she wanted. After the third time, he just gave up. Rolled atop her again to the clatter of something heavy and metal sliding across the floor.

Chloe shook her head, drawing out a breath for both of them.

"Leave it over there. That's my tazer."

She had a feeling she wasn't going to need it at all.  
"Maybe."

"No really. Unless you really take too long."

Davis leaned his head on her shoulder, and let himself smile. He wasn't weighing the odds right now.  
"You said so. I trust you."

"You should. I'm getting streetwise."

"I think you're on your way." (They were on their way.)

There was no fear, just her thumb pressing softly into his cheek, the amused dart of her tongue across her teeth.  
"Davis, shut up."

He didn't really do that at all. But, all in all, breath hitching and warm, he didn't really think she thought of it all that much. She was different that anyone else, she met him advance for advance- elbow propping on the carpet and collapsing under them both. It was an instinct-he didn't know if it came from just him after all. She curled her knees loosely around his waist, unwary of the predatory instinct that made the sweat drip into his eyes.

Davis knew she wasn't hurt (not yet not ever); this let him hear the smallest of pain indicators. There were just anticipatory muscular contractions in her back; a loose grip on one of the metal seat legs, like she was bracing herself for yet another revelation. Eyes soft and trusting and hungry.

The feeling in his chest tightened and loosened suddenly. His hand dug into her hip and he had every moment of it… What he had intended as a long (gentle) hard push crumpled her face in shock. He was not human now-no human powers, no ultra-human control.

Davis felt warmth that didn't come from his own freakish genetics. He thought it would sear him alive-how soon before those dark defense reflexes came in. Take it all. Take everything. Take it before it takes you down. He was made this way. He did not understand this—he couldn't stop it. In his mind- he could choose.

She didn't murmur and reassure. Chloe breathed in and out, one-two-three. Coached herself through this aloud like she was learning how to use the oxygen mask on her own, the same step-by-step way she tackled everything else. Leaned up and rubbed her cheek against his and both parts of him understood this.

It sensed like an x-ray could have. Nerves signaled another change. Another instinctual reaction. Fight or Flight both ended in death, for it, but there was a middle ground. The female counterpart to male sexual aggression.

He hitched her closer. Careful, careful, (he couldn't let go) and her mouth opened with a dry rush of air. Chloe's nails rasped against his back. But even that was careful. Almost chaste. Human. He felt.

Davis had always searched for some sense of belonging. And this moment was right. This was right to him.

* * *

"He said 'It's begun.'" Clark repeated. Leave the outright deception to Zod, Braniac didn't even know the meaning of it. He was the computer.

Lex narrowed his eyes and listened as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. So far he knew Minton Fine was a terrorist with big time aspirations and a deadly super weapon. That didn't keep him from having questions-how did you know to save me? That would never change.

But at least right now, he had an entirely different focus. The control was definitely monitoring something.

"This looks more like a bio-link to me." Lex said, looking over him carefully. Their jet was already half way over the D.C. skyline and Clark was still felt the kick.

Clark shut his mouth and nodded. Could be.

The control screen showed a three-dimensional graph of blips and waves, each successive wave that appeared spiking an angry-red.

"Those are someone's brain waves." Lex said.

Brainiac had taken a monitoring chip and planted it, waited until this weapon was ready to be used. Clark thought maybe-it could have been someone his age-a boy-planted until he began changing.

"Something's." Clark corrected. If Chloe was here she could have read the graph. All Lex could say was that whoever it was under extreme stress.

The program-or whatever it was- was 89% loaded. Not enough time, but not yet fully activated.

"It could be anger or this thing's majorly worked up."

Not the first time someone's sick invention had overrun its design. The meteor rock had turned nearly everyone he knew into something monstrous, and if it had been engineered this way… Unlike the systems Clark had knocked out, he couldn't just turn this thing off.

"It's too late."

Lex steepled his fingers on his knee.

"Not necessarily. How good of friends are we, Clark?"

"Good." Clark said too quickly. Wondered if he could stand this chess game of theirs for another second. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"We did have the birds and the bees talk already…?"

* * *

_**  
Endnotes: **Just in case that wasn't clear, Braniac implanted a chip in Davis which administers hormones that make Doomsday more dangerous than usual. This means Davis may indeed, turn into a much different kind of horny monster in the middle of your prons. Umm. hee?_


	5. part five

Notes: Next part! The shit actually hits the fan, I think. Many thanks to anyone who's sticking with this.

* * *

When Chloe arched into him she sounded like she was being pried open, smooth flesh and muscle and bone. (It saw it as beautiful, and deep in the back of his skull the association sickened him.) He couldn't stop.

Davis had never felt like he was being wholly possessed by something. The blackouts had been there as long as he could remember, but he hadn't ever gotten to a point where choosing was impossible while conscious at least.

He braced his hands on either side of her, fingers knotting, digging into a tangle of her hair and her neck swung into his shoulder. Davis couldn't smother the sound and didn't try to- let it wash over him with a flinch. It knew the softer places of her, knew this.

The feel of her tight around him-shoving down hard-it felt like he was digging himself into the only place he could ever be safe. Davis had the urge for nothing between them- not the tickling layers of cloth, not the barrier of thin plastic that would keep her safe. She'd know everything and maybe she'd see more than his blood coated reflection in her mirror, sometime. It wouldn't ever be enough.

Chloe's ankle slid tight on his back, twisted and went limp. Came back with more desperate pressure. She choked out, "So that's… how…", or 'too hard', choked out his name in monosyllabic mumbles that rang in his ears like wordless thunder. She was warm and his. His. He was made to…

The closer he got the more it seemed to elude him, even with aggressive clutching just under his shoulders-desperation he get there to end her agony. The small throaty sounds she made turned into full blown screams and sickly sweet elation rushed through him, like he was flying (red bobbing, in blackness –lashing out---tearing through hundreds upon hundreds of thick cornering bodies)…

Davis slid a palm under her shoulder blades-pushed up- until the only think he could see or think or hear was the mingled textures of their breathing in the dark. Bucking carefully. She kissed him, lips tasting like blood. His head felt light, nearly bloodless and every bit of tension in him careened out of his control. He could feel the pulse moving under his eyelids, felt the tell-tale flutter of her muscles around him again. There was no stopping this time-and the feelings were going to drag him over the edge. He wanted so much it hurt, but he locked it- there in ugly broken sounds, behind his lips.

Chloe's shoulders shook against the redoubled onslaught and the sounds in her broke again. Sweat coated Davis's palms on the ground, closer now, safe. Chloe couldn't possible curl any closer. She smoothed her palm against his mouth, his breath and tried to pull the sounds out. The simple awe in the movement, in her eyes jarred him.

He couldn't let go enough before whole body just gave up. Darkness, Chloe couldn't see much in the darkness. Davis would think that the red haze was just his mind- that it wasn't red eyes that locked onto green ones.

(He would learn, Braniac was right. Emotion was flawed. Humans and non-humans both had an extraordinary capacity for self-deception. )  
For then, he slumped down like a boneless weight. Rolled with effort, felt safe inside her. Chloe seemed too exhausted to even say her own name, much less pull away. She wasn't broken. She pulled shaky fingers through the back of his hair.

Hers was matted and tangled, a halo that had gotten a little misaligned by clumsy fingers. He told her that, like it was some amazing revelation, half-stunned to hear just his own voice pitched a little hoarse.

Davis felt safe, ignored ten years of carefully layered protections. They were holding on, curled together on the dusty carpet. So normal, if sexual intercourse on dusty carpets could be counted on as normal. Chloe's back trembled.

"Hey, you gotta tell me what's wrong." He rubbed her back, palm down- not too hard Davis; there was no wall of cushioning cloth between them and she was so small. "Did it hurt?"

"Didn't notice." She was convulsing-still shaking-laughing.

"And this is funny."

"Yes. I just had my first orgasm and you're telling me I have nice hair."

Chloe wrapped her arms around his neck-he didn't feel the weight of the cells in fragile bones and skin-he felt her. And in Davis's mind, for just one moment, maybe his biggest problem was that he'd never understand girls.

_  
_

* * *

Clark fell asleep half way through the flight, slumped his head over the arm rest. He didn't look quite so needy and frightened, and Lex thought that maybe they had been almost as close as he said they were. It gave him more time to wonder exactly what kind of weapon had pulverized a man's skin in patches and left them both unharmed. What kind of power. There would be time for that later. Now he had to look at the control.

It had entirely too many buttons and switches on it, looked like something you saw on Stargate. Lex didn't understand how he understood the readouts. He just did. Maybe he had worked on experiments as a part of globe trotting.

The green symbols stood for hormones-testosterone, adrenaline, hallucinogens, variations of anabolic steroids that caused rages in normal patients. It was quite ingenious. The terrorist had made it so that the patient's system produced each of these hormones on his or her own. Someone was turning this operative psychotic; and he and Clark were going to stop him before he carved a few people up thinking they were demons from hell. But that wasn't the punch line at all.

Lex found just how the thing worked. He dug the chip out of the back of the control with a weird Aztec-like knife he found in his pocket. Pried the tracking device out and held it between his fingers. They could find their experiment now.

His head felt so light, heavy with intelligence and he doubted he even saw the chip at all. The world blackened before his eyes for a moment, glowing green.

Lex must have dozed off, because when he woke up, Clark was pacing the floor, looking good as new. A strange gray powder sifted between his fingers and fell to the expensive travel rug.

"If we don't know where it is, I don't know how we are supposed to find this thing."

_  
_

* * *

Jimmy didn't know why he was following Lana around like a puppy. He could have been calling his parents or at least little bro Henry. He just didn't. (And all and all he had to admit she was kind of hot.)

So he made another pass at her, and she looked prettily, girlishly offended. Then she smiled and her nose crinkled up, and Jimmy thought, oh well Henry had his comic books.

"I don't know if my job will still be there." Lana had said down-heartedly, once they got practically evacuated from the wreck of the hospital- by more broody types in uniforms. "It's making Sundae's." Of course. "You want to come back and see it?"

"Well, it's still awfully dangerous out here. Do you know kung fu?"

She blushed a 'no'.

Jimmy hoped Lana didn't expect him to protect her with big strong manly arms in case there were more crazy-ass monsters or zombie people running around. (He could weight lift. And kick box like a motherfucker- if he wanted to.)  
For now, he walked behind her.

_  
_

* * *

The first thing Chloe did when she woke up was to feel the space beside her. It couldn't have been caused by hallucinogenic expired coffee; the pillow was still very warm.

The whole night had been a blur to her (what a cliché) but she actually knew why it happened. They'd stumbled back-home- to her apartment a few hours later. Davis had remembered just where her room was as if he had night vision.

"We're doing this every night, whether you want to or not."

Davis hadn't even looked properly shocked- let that look of his melt into a kind of concentration. The door slammed behind her because she was too caught up to see it click shut properly. Davis's hands, Davis's smell (tinged with small remnants of theatre dust), Davis's everything and her heart going too fast even with her meteor infection. Enough to know that this thing with him wasn't ever letting up. The rough, involuntary sounds that she didn't think were all just because of her- like he really was made of some deeper, darker instinct that she was.

She must have passed out, sometime around there. Now Chloe felt tired- nerves thrumming with a fearful, anticipating kind of energy, the things they had done replayed themselves in as close to full definition as they could in her head. Mostly, maybe- she felt like burrowing against the thick warmth of his skin. Talking about her issues, which she was on her way to getting over. Talking with him, not at the empty space he left behind.

Davis was here. Not that she'd ever thought he was the one-night kind of guy. But he was here. She could actually talk to him.

" 'morning." She mumbled through the quilt. He didn't say 'Good Morning'. Just her name. His voice was deeper than usual, ragged, thick. The energy in her went up a few notches.

Sweat trickled down her thigh as she shoved aside the veritable mound of pillows. She would say more once she thought of something that meant anything other than 'Davis, fuck me into oblivion-again'. Chloe blinked the sleep from her eyes.

Davis stood by the window, staring out at the first sunlight they'd seen in days. It would have made a nice picture, straight from a harlequin romance cover really if he hadn't looked about 2.5 seconds from going into convulsions and throwing up. That put a dampener on it.

"Next time my jerky is three months past the expiration date; I'll throw it out, okay?"

Davis had known she was awake, before she had. He didn't turn toward her though, wiped a palm over his face, as if to conceal his expression or hold something back.

"Don't tell me this is another attack of 'I'm a danger to you.' "

Chloe pushed herself up, crept up behind him, looped a weak arm around his waist. One bodily fluid wasn't quite different from another after all.  
Davis was giving off enough head to power a small building and for once he didn't seem to relax or tighten under her touch. He just kept on shaking. She started getting more 'this is wrong vibes' when his skin started to feel different, hard and plate like under the surface.

"I'm going to hurt you. I - I'm going to leave." This was not just something he'd said because he wanted to save her the trouble of mopping her tiny bathroom's floor.

Davis fingers squeezed hers briefly and she winced. Watched the jagged lines forming on her palms in curious fascination. Maybe, he was a little dangerous. As he turned to her, his dark eyes glowed in a mindless kind of excitement that made the pit of her stomach ache in fear. She didn't back away.

He breathed in, looking into her eyes and she couldn't see anything she recognized behind them, until slowly, dawning, as if a spell had been broken his eyes widened and he moved so fast it nearly sent her reeling into the windowsill. "I did- I would." He grated.

His eyes had changed since that moment- red, bleeding into the pupils, like the blood had overrun from their usual melting brown depths. His skin was flushed, almost as if he was high. He had told her it started this way. He couldn't get away from the sun.

It rose while Davis stumbled a little further into the corner, wracked with shudders, sending a bookcase crashing to the ground. The wood splintered against his skin. His eyes weren't quite focused on her anymore and his face started to warp and bevel, tearing like a paper mache mask. It had to be a drug releasing in or near him, turning him…

"It's okay." Chloe pleaded. "I'm not going to get hurt again." She'd seen Clark's eyes like that. She thought she just had to get close enough to check for the offending red kryptonite. She couldn't see it anywhere on him. "Let me see if I can..."

"No." It could have been a sound caught between a sob and a laugh. "You've got to stay." The voice wasn't Davis anymore, just rage, vocal cords warping like the rest of him. Before she could see more he circumvented the open doorway- sent the thick wood swinging off its hinges and crashing back onto the floor right beside her.

Chloe stood very still against the wall-mind racing before she doubled her path back into the bedroom. Something was turning him into this. Weapon. She couldn't forget how his face had contorted in the mirror, dark and jagged. She knew Davis- the good guy paramedic and definitely-not-one-night-stand, but she did not know _that_.

Davis had been to the edge of panic when he told her to protect herself. But in the end Chloe didn't take either her gun or her tazer with her when she walked out the door. She had one dull kitchen knife, with liquid kryptonite smeared over the blade.

Chloe didn't feel like a heroine, nearly paralyzed like one of those hapless bystanders in horror movies, the ones so stupid you almost wished they'd die. She wasn't unafraid, but she knew exactly where he had been going.

You didn't love someone and then turn away and give up when they were at their worst. No matter how inhuman that was. She was going to follow him, if she could ever hope for that.

_  
_

* * *

Lex's suggestion had been less than helpful. If worse came to it, they'd have to find Fine's weapon by the trail of bodies it left behind. It was a long shot to look for Milton Fine's first experiment, since, in an unpleasant technicality, Milton Fine didn't exist.

Clark paced the floor of the mansion as Lex made use of his seedier contacts to attempt it, barely winging it through each conversation. He sidestepped through each question with that manic, frightful energy he had pursued their friendship at first. It had sent Clark backpedaling at the fear of what happened when he got what he wanted. Lex had always wanted more.

Now Lex was only part of himself without those years and the broken trust between them. He was safe, for the meantime. Clark awkwardly straightened the bust of Plato, watched Lex's deft fingers hanging up the black polished phone, tension building in his stomach. What if they never found this thing and it fulfilled its purpose? What if Braniac had really destroyed a part of Lex he could never get back? What if…?

Chloe had joked that his alien powers had been closer to density than seeing into the future. And if they were- he could afford to be stupid once. He put some of his speed into the movement, held the phone down before Lex dialed the next call in the list of hundreds, slipped an arm around his shoulders. It was like trying to hold onto a test tube without breaking it. Living, breathing… Lex patted him on the back like he was just learning to do it again.

"Thank you for doing this." Clark breathed, relieved that his voice was working again.

"You're welcome. Clark?" Lex was caught off guard enough that he didn't say anything about being able to help more if he actually did make the calls.

Lex's fingers tightened over his neck. He'd held onto too tightly, unnaturally so, Lex had to know something was up with him. But Lex's eyes were only searching and gray when he looked into them. The lies felt like meshes tightening on his skin.

Clark had meant to say something about being sorry, he was just scared.  
He said, "I can't do any of it without you." Maybe some intangible that was Lex still remembered. A smile built at the corner of Lex's mouth and his hand whispered across his mouth like a brand. Here lay the fear.

(This had to be something he could take back.)

_  
_

* * *

Maybe Davis had left hoping that the thick, heavy walls would be the genies bottle that held him in. But he wasn't within those walls yet. He ran like he had been afraid to before, heard thudding dully in his chest, constricting, moment by moment as his bones twisted and cracked, as the tissues warped and tore over their new shape. He could taste his blood on his tongue. And it wasn't as terrifying as he'd thought. Kind of beautiful.

When the senses returned full-force he heard like he heard Chloe breathe. Sound was everywhere. Heartbeats, racing and thrumming in his eardrums, becoming bigger than his thoughts. Bigger than the entire world. He thought his eardrums would rupture, but instead, the heartbeats were all in his head- the stink of blood in his nose. They knew what he was- they were coming- that's why they were beating like this-to make him mad, to end him and he had to live. He was made to live.

Davis knew where the torment came from, this heartbeat. He moved like a creature mad because as drunk on this as he was, he knew whose it was. Hers. He could hold it a little longer. Davis ran so she could not follow and took it along for the ride. Past hollowed bricks and buildings until all that was left to feel and think was of somewhere it would all stop. But it only got louder.

Davis collapsed. Bricks screeched as thick dense plates bumbled to a standstill. He couldn't see where he was. He couldn't see anything. Thick walls could hold this noise back. Thick walls were not enough. Everything needed to be quiet. He was going to make it quiet.

It wasn't quiet. The gravel crunched a hundred feet from Davis's twisted face- twisting still- his bones were cracking and he just had to give into it, give in... Not like this. Someone was after him. The sound of the walk was slow, like something dragging itself along. Too soft to understandably do any damage. It was the sound of a muted predator.

"Oh hello." A soft voice whispered. Davis would have known this voice. He'd stopped Charlie once after all. But Davis panicked, fighting. He did not know the voice, but the hundreds of bodies torn apart. It wanted to kill. To** It** Charlie was just another body, just another heartbeat that gave off a feeble screaming sound, a hollow, bullet-marked body made of skin and nerves.

When It broke through Davis's hold it rushed forward, effortlessly slicing though bricks. It was close to its prey. It let out a roar, and Davis knew they couldn't move.

"Not this time, bad dog."

The just rehabilitated, frayed electrical wires wrapped around Davis's- their body with a screaming sound. An electric shock shot through Davis- stringing spikes and a half-human face up in a gruesome mockery of a carcass. The electricity kept intensifying. The smell of rage and fear came off of Charlie, burning at their senses like bleach.

And then strangely, all the sounds started slowing- coming to a standstill and Davis couldn't move in the warped body of his. Blackened spikes began to slowly shrink like Styrofoam. Inside him, **It **screamed out enraged terror. But it could do nothing with him fighting. It had taken enough energy to change form.

Davis tried to move a clawed arm. Nothing happened. The electricity gave off one last arc- glowing white hot. Then the poles collapsed, pinning him down under their weight. This was just his dream, only different. Everything was different. The female-mates-Chloe's heartbeat was still far away. She wouldn't have to see this. The sounds wouldn't break her open.

"When I told you she wasn't worth it, I meant it. Bitch damaged me." The voice said conversationally. Charlie was all over blood, blood on his arm, soaking the legs and fly of his grubby jeans. Charlie's face swam in front of Davis's eyes like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

"I wonder what it will do to her pretty heart to see her present before she comes along to Daddy. You- lying here- darling good hero boy. Her pet fried by two-bit con man. You are a sight to see." Charlie smiled, kneeling close enough that the downed wires didn't touch him.

The effect of it was ruined as blood and spittle flew over Davis's face. Most of Davis's thoughts were pushed out by the high still swimming through him. It was curiously quiet, no more images of blood. He felt warm. The noise could stop. He wasn't going to kill Charlie out of revenge, out of brutal instinct. He wasn't going to kill them all. Maybe this death could be a long sleep and when he woke up he would be human and she'd tell him they'd find a way to make it.

"Girlfriend's not worth it. But you are worth it. I wonder what the boss could do with your heart. Can you imagine, I'll die, but I will have done my job. I will have done better. Two for the price of one."

"No."

He squeezed his eyes shut and lunged against the wires. Maybe, the dream was supposed to have poetic justice to it. Chloe wasn't going to die. He'd do it again. But Davis was too weak yet. When he tore at the wires, they just tightened, holding out against skin they could not pierce.

"You didn't think she could do that to Charlie? Her after you-then-rest. Nice."

"I'll stop you." Davis choked out.

As if to prove him wrong, Charlie walked away, grimy trench coat brushing an electrical wire.

"It was never you. It was just your heart. You can give up now." He said. Then Davis couldn't hear much but Charlie's squalling heartbeat, a blade with no fingers behind it pushing and pushing into the skin under his sternum. The slickness of blood because, he hadn't been killed like this.

He wasn't enough to save her. And if he let himself be he would kill. It was her or them. Chloe would have to leave the apartment and he'd wait like some stalker. Then she'd fight and the knife would cut a just little deeper because Charlie liked his games. And he'd have let it happen- wasn't he playing the hero.

It was a small, v-shaped cut, and Davis could see just the hilt. Already halfway around his heart. Maybe aliens had no real hearts. Black rippled under his skin, his arms as if the darkness in him could stop it through appearance alone.

The knife never stopped moving. It was slowly, steadily pushed away like a foreign bit of matter.  
Charlie began to sweat and the wires tightened on Davis like a noose. Davis laughed, red swimming behind his eyes and out of them. It all made perfect sense now. He had already died.

"Do it, damned dog..."

And when the electric wires finally broke open- buzzing and fizzing, when Charlie's knife hit the gravel with a sharp clink, when the air rushed by him with a hollow sound, Charlie's blood ran red on the pavement and that horrible sputtering heartbeat stopped, Davis didn't feel the blood burning his hands. The knife caught on a claw and broke into a token he no longer understood.

It let out a howl, and crashed through the nearest doorway. There was no reason to it. Smell, sight, sound faded into one unbearable sense. Addicting. Freeing. Nothing. Take it down before it takes you down. Take it if it can harm you. Everything can harm you. Everything will hurt you. Make it stop.

Beams and marble walls crumpled to the ground. Metal and cloth tore with an unsatisfying rending in the empty theatre. There was nothing more to kill there. There was nothing to kill there until there was.

_  
_

* * *

Clark closed his eyes tightly. As if now, perhaps, at last, he was losing some of his innocence. His lips were dry, not the least bit chapped, smooth like long shot of whiskey after a staff meeting, Lex must have had them. All bruising, desperate force and unresolved something, not just youth and unblemished life. Lex didn't remember if he had done this before, with him, point blank. But it was instinctual to know what it was like to want something, to give in. This felt more real than the rest.

Clark kept his hands to Lex's shoulders and the skin bruised. He needed this. It wasn't an intrusion, not really. Lex could have thought they had been this way, if not for that small fact. He had wanted something from Clark. And now, now, he didn't quite get it, anticipation burning under him like embers.

When he pulled back Clark's eyes were glazed, something slumbering coming to the surface again, quickly hidden. It was unlikely it was guilt- what would he have done to feel guilty for, an his age, with his eyes?

Lex thought, at least, before, in this ancient alternate life of his, he had actually known who he was involved with instead of just the why. He needed to know something true besides the untraceable enemy they were trying to fight.

What was in him that made Clark look so broken?  
"I'm afraid of how this will end." Clark had answered. "Of what will happen- with- this thing. It's everything, Lex."  
Lex was a novice at living, but he knew the sound of a lie.

After he had gone, Lex didn't go back to the phone. He picked up a half-finished glass of wine, it must have been his, and leaned over the toppled newspapers on the floor. The Pentagon, torn into by something inhumanely powerful. The incineration of three-quarters of its occupants without the fire alarms even being triggered. He read that article over, then the next until they all seemed a fever dream.

All similar. One common factor.

Lex closed his eyes. The shards cut into his fingers, shattered into miniscule pieces on the clear marble. Perhaps, perhaps he had cleaning to come in for that.

_  
_

* * *

The path was littered with empty, broken bricks and felled electricity poles. Then all Chloe had to do was follow the trail of red, like the clumsy swathe of a painter's brush. She didn't know who it had been, knew she was stupid, knew what had done it and it was close. The sound of Chloe's breath slowed to a trickle outside the theatre's thick walls. She didn't touch the door, crept up several sets of fire escapes on the winding, towering eyesore, hands brutally close against the brick.

Her knife hand shook enough to send the blade tumbling when she heard the bricks breaking open on the opposite side. She didn't have much time, so she had to get it right now. She was at the top already, anyway.

She swung the door open a crack. She couldn't see anything but black from here. The sound silenced the renewed barrage of terrifying breakage, though.  
It was moving down there. It heard her breathing all the way up here, in the same way Davis would have. She doubted it was going to come for her to scratch its ears.

Chloe took a shaky step forward as the door and half the wall broke away. There, a towering hulk of sharp black spikes and two glowing red eyes. The jagged outline that had torn right through Davis's skin. The double barred door broke before it hit the bottom, like a splintered child's toy. She didn't scream, didn't make a sound.

It lunged forward with one swift, brutal motion. Chloe tripped back over her own feet, teetering over the edge. One step farther and she would kill herself all on her own. She wasn't dead yet.

It let out a grating, baying sound that made her want to clasp her hands over her ears. It was caught between the two very thickest of the brick walls. One clawed protrusion pitifully trapped under the metal bar, and for the smallest moment, she thought that maybe it was afraid of pain too. Stupid thought. She had half a minute tops, before it was free and she was dead. Had she really expected a show-and-tell of the mindless dark thing that had always terrified Davis?

One more step. It smelled like rust. She could almost imagine how the show-and-tell would go, too. You know what your deepest darkness looks like Davis? It's like a porcupine. She was closer to crazy than she thought.

Davis hadn't wanted her to go mad. He saved people. He'd nearly gotten himself killed twice because he wanted to make sure she was safe. This was the one thing she could imagine was stronger than anything. Stronger than whatever they were doing to him. Strong enough to bring him back.

Chloe waited until It started to tear the metal away from its black talons. Then she jumped.  
_  
_

* * *

Tears of pain sprung to the corners of Chloe's eyes as she landed, fall half broken by a sharp body. After a panicked, sharp scrabble, it tore itself away. She slid the rest of the way against the wall, barely managing to keep her head off the ground. If it had swatted her away she would be dead. Chloe was pretty sure her left arm was broken. It refused to move so much as to lift itself. (At least it wasn't her right hand.)

Her eyes had no such paralysis. She watched as the creature didn't magically turn into Davis. It didn't lunge toward her this time, red eyes holding her entranced for a single moment before it tore off against the opposite wall to destroy its surroundings with renewed fervor. Chloe flinched as a warped chair frame hit the wall beside her. Maybe some remnant of Davis understood her pain.

Around them were just the shredded opulent fabrics, crumbled bits of wall. Torn scraps of metal. After a time, the tearing sounds stopped, but she didn't get up even then, in the dark. The theatre was completely silent before she moved again. And It-he-they were both lying there. The transformation wasn't instantaneous. Black gave way to graying skin- then Davis was lying there, pale and covered with bloody thick soot and rock instead of just blood. It wasn't all his or her blood, of course it wasn't.

Chloe wondered how used he would feel when he woke up- tried to imagine how horrible it would be to have all her worst fears about herself confirmed in one moment. To know that it might not ever stop. She thought, with sudden desperate clarity, that those green walls Davis had seen as a boy hadn't been an accident. That he'd been an experiment. He had been turned into Braniac's weapon to defeat Clark and to destroy the world and everything Davis had wanted to do with his life. The least she could do was try to stop it. He'd trusted her.

Now. The sun was starting to shine in through the gap in the side of the wall. The sun should have fueled Davis's transformations and his strength, and in the dark it shouldn't have. Something was making him like this, she repeated in her head. Like before, she shifted his head into her lap, but he didn't stir. Her fingers combed through the hair at the nape of his neck. Davis had looked back at her, that time, with an innocent intensity that made her feel nothing else mattered.

It was time, now. The kitchen knife dug into her hand. Chloe should have been glad he wasn't awake. If he were she could have talked to him, and it would have made her feel better. Now...

He was like anyone else, she should have known. It wasn't easy. Her breath hitched. Fifteen minutes later, she closed her fingers over it, his blood pooling to the ground.

_  
_

* * *

Davis woke warm, face wet, unable to budge an inch. His ears were still curiously stunned after the shock. He knew what death was supposed to be like, and it wasn't this. He was just awake again. He could smell blood on him and around him. He could smell Chloe's skin.

Davis lurched up, eyes opening to her still face and the red everywhere. He just managed to catch the back of her head before she fell. She was breathing. He had to cure her-fix her- she shouldn't have come. He squeezed his eyes shut, blood pounding in his chest, knowing he would open them. Chloe was covered in blood, enough to have sustained a heavy stomach wound. He eased her down onto the ground, once plush carpet, now a newly revealed, crumbling foundation. If he could find it... If there was less blood…

Davis almost jolted when fingers wrapped around his and pulled his hand over her chest.  
"Hey, there, sleeping beauty." Chloe whispered. Her eyes were puffy, weary but her heartbeat was overpoweringly steady as it couldn't have been if she was bleeding out. "I told you I'd be fine."

Davis did the instinctual thing and pulled her close, relieved to find her warm, just like he remembered. He'd woken up tens of times after a blackout, fear like acid in his mouth. He'd started to fear more than anything that it would have been her he woke up to, quiet and still. She'd defied expectation. She always did.

He pulled her into his lap. She was alive and he couldn't help it. Chloe's fingers settled easily against his shoulders, blood on them too, but unhurt. In no time at all, her nails scratched at his skin she had wrapped her arms around his neck so tight. The rest of him had no trouble remembering how warm she was even if he wanted nothing more than hold her. For any other two people in the world, this would be awkward.

Chloe just stared at him, blinked, kissed him hard on the mouth. When he let her go she was wincing. Down boy.  
"It's the shoulder." She said finally. "I…fell. That's it."

It had to be a whole lot more than that. She looked like she'd made it through the apocalypse, again. She had, he had been it- and he knew now. Every single person who had died in that hospital…all of those today.  
It hadn't started to sink in, it never could when she touched him- but with her arms close around him, he started to wonder what else she was touching on his skin.

"Do you know..?" He asked; it sounded marginally less horrifying than, 'how many people did I kill?'

"It's mostly yours." Chloe held up her bloodier hand, a small, barbed chip of metal in her palm. "I took this out of the back of your head. You really scared me and…"

He imagined Chloe. His head cradled on her lap, blood pouring out. Oh. She wasn't sure he'd wake up.

The smudge of blood over her forehead had leaked into her eye, and she wiped it away, messily and one armed. He wanted to do it- was halfway to lifting his hand and just going with it. But he saw the marble around them, what was left of the only bomb safe spot in Metropolis. He let his hand drop to his side-thinking- she had been afraid he'd die. Not like the real fear wouldn't set in when the relief cooled. He couldn't assume.

Chloe's eyes followed his hand, mouth turning down into one of her smiles wasn't a smile at all but she kept going.  
"Someone was using you, Davis. This would have been your trigger; whenever they wanted you to do something... it wasn't you. I mean, I knew something was wrong, you looked like you were on drugs, and then the cerebral cortex was dispensing all of these messed up signals…"

"I killed someone today. I'm sorry." He said. "I had to choose."

"You didn't have a choice. It's okay to admit it." Chloe looked about ready to raise her voice, just the empty place between them. "You- I mean-when you changed-you didn't kill me. I would have sworn you-it-the thing-whatever was scared of me."

"Charlie." Davis said.

They found Charlie just outside the theatre. He was lying on his stomach, almost peacefully, no face torn to shreds, not like the others. Davis curled his fingers into fists that he loosened quickly. After what he had wanted to do to Chloe, had almost done, it was less than he had deserved. If she had seen his eyes just then…

A small detail caught Chloe's gaze. It was the knife, the knife Charlie had tried to use on her. She didn't look frozen this time, eyed the bits of it under the body with clinical curiosity. The hilt was missing.

"I guess, he's going to need to be buried sometime." She was probably thinking of something like protecting him from suspicion, but Davis wondered how many more bodies the police would be cleaning off the street. How many he'd torn apart.

In the spot of time it took him to think that, Chloe had rolled the body over.

A clawed flower of blood bloomed from Charlie's chest where his heart had been. His eyes were open; his face a caricature of what it had been in life. That smile. Like he had watched with enraged glee as it was out plucked out, beating. The knife hilt was in his hand, pushed through-Davis knew a heart when he saw it.

The clincher. She hadn't screamed. Chloe looked away from the body and sprinted off into one of the few shadows left with the uncontrollable urge to gag.

Davis didn't even try to stop her. Somehow the loss of everything he had left to love left him curiously paralyzed in the wake of all he hated. It was dangerous out there. She wasn't running from out there. He could see why she was running.

He sank down onto the floor. Looked. The body seemed to have some sort of hypnotic hold on him. A horrific piece of artwork you expected to see in your dossier of arty serial killer victims instead of wild animal attacks. It had all been there, in the back of his mind.

For the first time Davis really saw that no matter what he told himself about saving people and how much fear he buried underneath the surface, it wouldn't matter.

He flexed his fingers, saw his nails were all black underneath. This was what he had been. This was what he was. And if he was truthful, the feeling hadn't left him. He had his senses and he could feel it still, roiling in the back of his skull, the unnamed darkness he had tried to hide from over these years. In a flash of insight he knew it wasn't going to stop.

Davis didn't know how much time had passed before he heard the next thing. All he knew is that Chloe was there, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve. The nerves hadn't quite left her eyes, but she had mastered them now.

"I just needed a moment."

His eyes burned and he swiped at them. His fingertips came away wet and scarlet, as if tears could make them bleed again.

"I'm sorry this happened to you." She was kneeling, in front of him, near that as it if didn't exist at all. "You want to save everyone. I know how much it's hurting you."

It wasn't a nameless feeling of foreboding. He'd torn out Charlie's heart, like that. It was all too real now.  
"This was me. I can't- I just can't disassociate anymore." She would have been better off if she had taken the excuse to run and run and never stop.

It's okay. Gotcha. Chloe nudged into his shoulder, her back turned to the sight of Charlie's face frozen in its eternal smile. It wasn't going stop. Not for her. Not for this.

And even as Davis thought it, knew it, she pulled her clean hand up to lean against his face. Held it up with the uninjured one until it dropped limply to her side. The sun lit her up like some portrait of the Madonna, something not even the darkness would touch.

"Let me take you home." She whispered.


End file.
